mournival

plural mournivals · alternative murnival

1. obsoletecard gamesIn the game of gleek, and other card games, a set of four cards of the same face value.

   Before George, there's not enough to rig out a Mournival of VVhores: they'l think me grown a meer Curmudgeon. Mercy on me, how will this glorious Trade be carri'd on, with ſuch a miſerable Stock!

   1677 (date written), John Dryden, The Kind Keeper; or, Mr. Limberham: A Comedy: […], London: […] R[ichard] Bentley, and M[ary] Magnes, […], published 1680, →OCLC, Act IV, scene i, page 37

2. archaicbroadlyrareA set of four people or things; a quartet.

   The Emperor, flanked by his Custodes, and Horus along with his Mournival of captains teleported onto the ship, but were scattered across the vast command decks by sinister magicks.

   2010, Aurelius Rex, “The History and Legacy of Dorn’s Betrayal”, in Aurelius Rex, editor, The Dornian Heresy, number 1, page 6, column 2

   3 more examples

   It was, as we shall have occasion to emphasize, not an accidental circumstance that the terror-novel was in the fullest flush of popularity during the seventeen-nineties, and it was also in this decade that Mrs. Radcliffe wrote and published her most characteristic works, A Sicilian Romance, 1790; The Romance of the Forest, 1791; The Mysteries of Udolpho, 1794; and The Italian, or, The Confessional of the Black Penitents, 1797, a mournival of Gothic masterpieces.

   1964 [1938], Montague Summers, “The Romantic Feeling” (chapter I), in The Gothic Quest, Russell & Russell, page 56

   “[…] And there are those two girls to provide for. Isabella, Isabella—I always think of them as half a mournival of Isabellas—but what the deuce are their other names?” “Isabella Lees and Isabella Brownwood,” said Thomas.

   1958, Phyllis Bentley, “Isabella, Isabella”, in Love and Money: Seven Tales of the West Riding, New York: MacMillan Publishers, section 10, page 81

   Four plumbers came by a little while ago, looked at the leaks, and left to go to lunch. I guess, lacking a penis, that I'm not qualified to note that, yes indeedy, there is a leak from the ceiling in the lab. Or, perhaps, they it^([sic]) would take a mournival of manly men to keep lil' ole' me from panicking. They milled around in the hall for a minute, told me they's be back, and left.

   2005 May 27, Penelope Periwinkle, “Obsolete”, in soc.singles.moderated (Usenet)