Plaintive; melancholy

• Expressing sorrow
• Like Shelley's "Adonais"
• Melancholy
• Like Berg's "Violin Concerto"
• Like some of Thomas Gray's poetry
• Plaintive verse

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English Word definitions in Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
adjective EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES ▪ elegiac verse EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS ▪ Both catch the film's elegiac mood, bathed in southern sunshine but overhung with impending death. ▪ Chahine Yavroyan's sound-design is a mosaic of distant gunfire, creaking hulks ...

Wiktionary Word definitions in Wiktionary
a. 1 Of, or relating to an elegy. 2 Expressing sorrow or mourning. n. A poem composed in the couplet style of classical elegy: a line of dactylic hexameter followed by a line of dactylic pentameter

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary Word definitions in Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1580s, in reference to lines of verse of a particular construction, from Middle French élégiaque , from Latin elegiacus , from Greek elegeiakos , from eleigeia (see elegy ). In ancient Greece the verse form was used especially with mournful music. Meaning ...

WordNet Word definitions in WordNet
adj. resembling or characteristic of or appropriate to an elegy; "an elegiac poem on a friend's death" expressing sorrow often for something past; "an elegiac lament for youthful ideals"