jeremiad

plural jeremiads

1. A long speech or prose work that bitterly laments the state of society and its morals, and often contains a prophecy of its coming downfall.

   Near-synonyms: diatribe, tirade, lamentation, lament, litany; see also Thesaurus:diatribe

   5 more examples

   "Father Maguire," he said in the broadest of Cork brogues, without the ghost of a smile on his grave Irish face, "is it a song yez wantin'? Well, thin, it's just a jeremiad I 'd be singin' yez, an' not another song at all, at all."

   1895, Mary Gaunt, The Moving Finger: A Digger's Christmas

   According to the ‘business as usual’ school of modern historians, the millennial preoccupations of Glaber and Wulfstan hold no more significance than the jeremiads of the gullible and doom-laden who agonise in every society - the medieval equivalents of believers in UFOs, the Bermuda Triangle, and the X files.

   1999, Robert Lacey, Danny Danziger, The Year 1000: What life was like at the turn of The First Millennium, London: Abacus, published 2000, page 187

   “This is precisely the manner of Balkanization that Schlesinger cautioned us about in his prescient jeremiad on multiculturalism, “The Disuniting of America.””

   2006 May 5, The Columbus Dispatch

   Cannes is smacking its lips in anticipation of filmmaker and provocateur Michael Moore's latest jeremiad against the US administration, which receives its premiere at the film festival today.

   2007 May 19, Charlotte Higgins, “US government trying to seize new Michael Moore film, says producer”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 09 Mar 2021

   His warnings ignored in Washington, Dalio issued more jeremiads to his clients. “If the economy goes down, it will not be a typical recession,” his newsletter said in January, 2008.

   2011 July 18, John Cassidy, “Mastering the Machine”, in The New Yorker, →ISSN, archived from the original on 05 Mar 2019

   Synonyms: diatribe, tirade, lamentation, lament, litany, admonition, condemnation, diatribe