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plaintiveness
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Plaintiveness

Plaintive \Plain"tive\, a. [F. plaintif. See Plaintiff, n.]

  1. Repining; complaining; lamenting.
    --Dryden.

  2. Expressive of sorrow or melancholy; mournful; sad. ``The most plaintive ditty.''
    --Landor. [1913 Webster] -- Plain"tive*ly, adv. -- Plain"tive*ness, n.

Wiktionary
plaintiveness

n. The state or condition of being plaintive.

WordNet
plaintiveness

n. expressing sorrowfulness

Usage examples of "plaintiveness".

And from time to time there was a rasping quality about them that turned their plaintiveness into a stark and chilling bleakness.

Like the Russian serfs, and the bondmen of all ages and lands, the songs they made and sang all had an undertone of touching plaintiveness, born of ages of dumb suffering.

Their eyes had in them the querulous plaintiveness of the monkey, their faces were even less symmetrical than the monkey's, and, hairless of body, they were far more ungarmented than any monkey, for clothes they had none.