plaintive

<font size="-1" face="arial, helvetica"> <p> <strong> <font color="#000066">Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for July 27, 2023 is:</font> </strong> </p> <p> <strong>plaintive</strong> &#149; \PLAYN-tiv\&nbsp; &#149; <em>adjective</em><br /> <p>Something (usually a sound) that is described as <em>plaintive</em> is expressive of sorrow or suffering.</p> <p>// The <em>plaintive</em> call of the loon, as though it were mourning some bygone age, drifted across the lake. </p> <p><a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/plaintive">See the entry ></a></p> </p> <p> <strong>Examples:</strong><br /> <p>“To the ravishingly <em>plaintive</em> sound of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Caetano-Veloso">Caetano Veloso</a> singing the <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fado">fado</a> that gives the film [<em>Strange Way of Life</em>] its title, strummed on guitar and lip-synced by rising Spanish heartthrob Manu Ríos, Silva rides across the desert that separates him from the town of Bitter Creek to reunite, for the first time in 25 years, with Sheriff Jake.” — David Rooney, <em>The Hollywood Reporter</em>, 17 May 2023</p> </p> <p> <strong>Did you know?</strong><br /> <p>“The people are drifting from door to door / Can’t find no heaven I don’t care where they go.” So sang Nehemiah Curtis “Skip” James on a Depression-era recording of his song “Hard Time Killing Floor Blues.” James’s somber lyrics as well as his otherworldly <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/falsetto">falsetto</a> and distinctive minor-key fingerpicking may be aptly described by the adjective <em>plaintive</em>—deeply expressive, like much of the <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/blues">blues</a>. <em>Plaintive</em> comes from the Middle English word <em>plaintif</em>, meaning “grieving,” a borrowing from an identical Anglo-French word that itself was formed from the Anglo-French noun <em>plaint</em>, a word meaning “<a href="htt