elegiac

comparative more elegiac · superlative most elegiac · alternative elegaic

1. Of or relating to an elegy.

   the elegiac distich or couplet, consisting of a dactylic hexameter and pentameter

2. Expressing sorrow or mourning.

   And elegiac griefs, and songs of love,

   1856, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “First Book”, in Aurora Leigh, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1857, →OCLC, page 36

   1 more example

   Hast thou no elegiac verse / For Brunswick's venerable hearse, / What! not a line, a tear, a sigh, / When valour bleeds for liberty?

   1808 February 22, Walter Scott, “Introduction to Canto Third: To William Erskine, Esq.”, in Marmion; a Tale of Flodden Field, Edinburgh: […] J[ames] Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Company, […]; London: William Miller, and John Murray, →OCLC, stanza III, page 119

   Synonyms: sorrowful, mournful, atrabiliary, atrabilious, blitheless, dispirited, blue, bummed out

plural elegiacs · alternative elegaic

1. A poem composed in the couplet style of classical elegies: a line of dactylic hexameter followed by a line of dactylic pentameter.

   His saphics are worse, if possible, than his elegiacs

   1748, John Upton, Critical Observations on Shakespeare, 2nd edition, page 385