Expressing poetic sorrow for something past

• Like funeral dirges
• Like Shelley's "Adonais"
• Wistfully mournful
• Expressing sorrow
• Like a Thomas Gray work
• Plaintive; melancholy
• Mournful English cricket side, by one account

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 ...

The Collaborative International Dictionary Word definitions in The Collaborative International Dictionary
Elegiac \E*le"gi*ac\, n. Elegiac verse.

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 ...