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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
lamentable
adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
state
▪ It is a lamentable state of affairs.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ It is lamentable that Cassidy will not get to coach his team next season.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Lamentable

Lamentable \Lam"en*ta*ble\, a. [L. lamentabilis: cf. F. lamentable.]

  1. Mourning; sorrowful; expressing grief; as, a lamentable countenance. [Archaic] ``Lamentable eye.''
    --Spenser.

  2. Fitted to awaken lament; to be lamented; sorrowful; pitiable; regrettable; unfortunate; as, a lamentable misfortune, or error. ``Lamentable helplessness.''
    --Burke.

  3. Miserable; pitiful; paltry; -- in a contemptuous or ridiculous sense.
    --Bp. Stillingfleet. -- Lam"en*ta*ble*ness, n. -- Lam"en*ta*bly, adv.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
lamentable

c.1400, from Middle French lamentable and directly from Latin lamentabilis "full of sorrow, mournful, lamentable," from lamentari "to lament" (see lamentation). Related: Lamentably.

Wiktionary
lamentable

a. Causing sorrow, distress or regret; deplorable, pitiful or distressing.

WordNet
lamentable
  1. adj. an archaic word for mournful; "tell thou the lamentable tale of me, And send the hearers weeping to their beds"- Shakespeare

  2. bad; unfortunate; "my finances were in a deplorable state"; "a lamentable decision"; "her clothes were in sad shape"; "a sorry state of affairs" [syn: deplorable, distressing, pitiful, sad, sorry]

Usage examples of "lamentable".

The ecotheorists further take this metabiological absolutizing and not only attempt to explain culture with its terms, but also necessarily see culture as a lamentable deviation from those terms: all conclusions guaranteed by the prior absolutizing.

In consequence of these lamentable occurrences, and the excited state of the northern districts of the kingdom, on the 22nd of July, Lord John Russell announced his intention of taking the requisite precautions for securing the tranquillity of the country, by placing at the hands of the magistrates a better organized constitutional force for putting the law into execution, and providing sufficient military means for supporting them in the performance of their duty.

And I recommend to them that, while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation, and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity, and union.

And when they called their sister by her name, that their lamentable cries came unto her eares, shee came forth and said, Behold, heere is shee for whom you weepe, I pray you torment your selves no more, cease your weeping.

The lowest, and most deiected thing of Fortune, Stands still in esperance, liues not in feare: The lamentable change is from the best, The worst returnes to laughter.

Sea full of shelves and rocks, sands, gulfs, Euripuses, and contrary tides, full of fearful monsters, uncouth shapes, roaring waves, tempests, and Siren calms, Halcyonian Seas, unspeakable misery, such Comedies and Tragedies, such absurd and ridiculous, feral and lamentable fits, that I know not whether they are more to be pitied or derided, or may be believed, but that we daily see the same still practiced in our days, fresh examples, new news, fresh objects of misery and madness in this kind, that are still represented to us, abroad, at home, in the midst of us, in our bosoms.

With this darkness came a faint moaning of hollow wind from the desert, a lamentable murmur that shuddered over the great spaces, crept among the palms and the flatroofed houses, and died away at the foot of the brown mountains beyond the Hammam Salahine.

The wisdom of the godly founders of the plantation at Salem, the charge whereof was entrusted to my weak hands, did clearly perceive the lamentable effects, both to the souls and bodies of the users, hebetating the former, and debauching the latter, likely to arise from an indulgence therein, and they did therefore, both in their first and second letter of instructions to myself and the Council, straightly enjoin that no tobacco should be planted by any of the new planters under our government, saving under close restrictions, and that the same might be taken by ancient men and none other, and that privately.

And may I not further say that the lamentable consequence to us eight hundreders, dining out among each other is this, that we too often get no dinner at all.

Clapham that has escaped my lamentable improvidence, but there are one or two things--the iron-bound chest, the bureau with a broken hinge, and the large air pump--distinctly pawnable if only you can contrive to get them to a pawnshop.

College, and there ascertained that a Griffin between two Wheatsheaves, which stood on the title-page of the book, formed the crest of Sir Austin Absworthy Bearne Feverel, Baronet, of Raynham Abbey, in a certain Western county folding Thames: a man of wealth and honour, and a somewhat lamentable history.

It would be difficult to say whose lot was most lamentable, that of the active Tories, who gave up their patrimonies for a pittance from the British pension-roll, and their native land for a cold reception in their miscalled home, or the passive ones who remained behind to endure the coldness of former friends, and the public opprobrium, as despised citizens, under a government which they abhorred.

O sweet Psyches I pray thee to take pitty on thy selfe, of me, and deliver thy husband and this infant within thy belly from so great danger, and see not, neither heare these cursed women, which are not worthy to be called thy sisters, for their great hatred and breach of sisterly amity, for they wil come like Syrens to the mountains, and yeeld out their pittious and lamentable cries.

A conventional remark to which he expected a conventional answer in mayoral, prefectoral words like odious or lamentable.

Bologna have had from Otto Agenius Lustrulanus, whom Mondino had used as an assiduous prosector, if he had not been taken away by a swift and lamentable death before he had completed the sixth lustrum of his life!