[ad. L. lāment-um wailing, weeping, lamentation.]
1. An act of lamenting, a passionate or demonstrative expression of grief. Also poet. the action of lamenting, lamentation.
1591. Shaks., 1 Hen. VI., I. i. 103. To adde to your laments … I must informe you of a dismall fight, Betwixt the stout Lord Talbot, and the French.
c. 1592. Marlowe, Jew of Malta, I. ii. Why stand you thus, unmoved with my laments?
1629. Milton, Christ’s Nativity, 183. A voice of weeping heard, and loud lament.
1697. Dryden, Virg. Georg., IV. 666. All her fellow Nymphs the Mountains tear With loud Laments.
1715–20. Pope, Iliad, XXIII. 17. The troops … thrice in order led … their coursers round the dead; And thrice their sorrows and laments renew.
1768. Beattie, Minstr., I. xxxiv. When the long-sounding curfew from afar Loaded with loud lament the lonely gale.
1821. Shelley, Hellas, 868. Voices Of strange lament soothe my supreme repose.
1869. J. Martineau, Ess., II. 283. What is this but the morbid lament of scepticism?
1870. Bryant, Iliad, I. V. 136. On his knees With sad lament he fell.
2. A set or conventional form of mourning; a song of grief, an elegy; esp. a dirge performed at a death or burial; also, the air to which such a lamentation is sung or played.
1698. M. Martin, Voy. St. Kilda (1749), 57. Upon those Occasions [they] make doleful Songs, which they call Laments.
1791. Burns (title), Lament for James, Earl of Glencairn.
1814. Scott, Lord of Isles, V. xxvii. Soon as the dire lament was play’d.
1822. D. Stewart, Sk. Highlanders, I. 81. Solemn and melancholy airs or Laments (as they call them) for their deceased friends.
1882. ‘Ouida,’ In Maremma, I. 154. It was rarely that she chose other themes than the passionate laments of the provincial canzoni.
