What is "plaintive"

Usage examples of "plaintive".

Instead of asserting, that the authority of the gods was superior to that of the emperor, they desisted, with a plaintive murmur, from the use of those sacred rites which their sovereign had condemned.

Scottish kitchen reverberates with bouzouki music and a plaintive tinny voice singing in Greek.

Where oaths and threats had issued from their mouths now came plaintive petitions for mercy, and those who had laughed with such bold braggadocio now wept like young girls, but Elric, full of his old battle-joy, spared none.

Louise, the wife of the Wild Margrave, and more than once it had welcomed her next neighbor and sister Wilhelmina, the Margravine of Baireuth, whose autobiographic voice, piercingly plaintive and reproachful, seemed to quiver in the air.

When the player struck the marimba with small hammers, the gourds gave out soft, plaintive tones, perfectly in key.

As he mellowed into his plaintive history his tears dripped upon the lantern in his lap, and I cried, too, from sympathy.

Patriotism and the beauties of external nature were the favourite subjects of his muse, which, as if premonished of his early fate, loved to sing in plaintive strains.

Exquisite melodies, limpid and unstrained as the carol of a bird in Spring-time, and as plaintive as the cooing of a turtle-dove seems as natural products of the Scottish Highlands as the gorse which blazons on their hillsides in August.

Khosrul continued in softer, more melancholy accents, that, while plaintive, were still singularly impressive.

To drive the convoy away as well, to leave the colonnade, go into the palace, order the room darkened, collapse on the bed, send for cold water, call in a plaintive voice for his dog Banga, and complain to him about the hemicrania.

Silvio Pellico, the story of whose sufferings in the prison of Spielberg, has carried his plaintive memory into all lands, and the Marchioness Giulia di Barolo were a pair of friends brought together as by a special appointment of Heaven.

The dirges sung as the procession winds through the streets are extremely plaintive, and are the most touching specimens of Ecuadorian music.

He has two registers at his command: a low, troubled one that he uses when he is reviewing the agenda and another, higher, and more plaintive one that he uses when he is exhorting us publicly, for instance when we occupy the restaurant.

Erast Fandorin shivered as he recalled the events of the previous night and the plaintive shriek with which Amalia had collapsed when she was shot.

I was close enough now to the top to hear it crazily whining through the harpstrings: the eeriest, most plaintive music .