Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Elegy |
ElegyNoun1. A mournful poem; a lament for the dead. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "elegy" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1258. (references) |
Etymology: Elegy \El"e*gy\, noun; plural Elegies. [Latin expression elegia, Greek, feminine singular (cf., proper, neutral plural of distich in elegiac verse), from elegiac, from song of mourning.]. (Websters 1913) |
| Domain | Definitions |
Satire | ELEGY, n. A composition in verse, in which, without employing any of the methods of humor, the writer aims to produce in the reader's mind the dampest kind of dejection. The most famous English example begins somewhat like this: The cur foretells the knell of parting day; The loafing herd winds slowly o'er the lea; The wise man homeward plods; I only stay To fiddle-faddle in a minor key. Source: Devil's Dictionary. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Elegy."
Synonym: ElegySynonym: lament (n). (additional references) |
| Context | Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus). |
Interment | Funeral, funeral rite, funeral solemnity; kneel, passing bell, tolling; dirge. (lamentation); cypress; orbit, dead march, muffled drum; mortuary, undertaker, mute; elegy; funeral, funeral oration, funeral sermon; epitaph. |
Lamentation | Mourning, weeds, willow, cypress, crape, deep mourning; sackcloth and ashes; lachrymatory; knell; deep death song, dirge, coronach, nenia, requiem, elegy, epicedium; threne; monody, threnody; jeremiad, jeremiade; ullalulla. |
Poetry | Poem; epic, epic poem; epopee, epopoea, ode, epode, idyl, lyric, eclogue, pastoral, bucolic, dithyramb, anacreontic, sonnet, roundelay, rondeau, rondo, madrigal, canzonet, cento, monody, elegy; amoebaeum, ghazal, palinode. |
| Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus. | |
Crosswords: Elegy |
| English words defined with "elegy": elegiac, Elegies, elegize, Epicede ♦ gray ♦ Nenia ♦ Thomas Gray. (references) |
| Specialty definitions using "elegy": Adonis Flower ♦ Curfew Bell ♦ Daphnaida, Dolorous Dettie ♦ Fidele ♦ Kinah ♦ Narrow House ♦ Wag Beards. (references) |
| Etymologies containing "elegy": Elegiographer. (references) |
| Non-English Usage: "Elegy" is also a word in the following language with English translations in parentheses. Hungarian (burden, compound, mixture). |
| Domain | Usage | |
Movie/TV Titles | Elegy of Hell (1929) The Elegy (1927) Elegy (1999) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title |
Books | |
Theater & Movies | |
Music |
|
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Author | Quotation |
James Wolfe | The General [Wolfe]...repeated nearly the whole of Gray's Elegy...adding, as he concluded, that he would prefer being the author of that poem to the glory of beating the French tomorrow. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | |
| "Elegy" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 96.61% of the time. "Elegy" is used about 59 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (singular) | 96.61% | 57 | 44,859 |
| Noun (proper) | 3.39% | 2 | 245,945 |
| Total | 100.00% | 59 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day |
elegy | 62 |
elegy poem | 27 |
elegy written in a country churchyard | 15 |
elegy grays | 6 |
elegy poetry | 5 |
american elegy | 5 |
elegy gray thomas | 4 |
elegy example | 4 |
elegy in a country churchyard | 4 |
elegy jane | 3 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Language | Translations for "elegy"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Afrikaan | elegie. (various references) | |
Albanian | elegji, poemë vajtimtare. (various references) | |
Arabic | مقطوعة موسيقية تأملية, مرثاة (lament), قصيدة تأملية. (various references) | |
Bulgarian | елегия (lament). (various references) | |
Chinese | 悲歌 (dirge, sad melody, sing with solemn fervor, stirring strains, threnody), "歌 (a mournful song, dirge). (various references) | |
Czech | elegie (lament). (various references) | |
Dutch | elegie, treurdicht, klaagzang, klaaglied. (various references) | |
Esperanto | elegio. (various references) | |
Faeroese | sorgarljóð, harmaljóð. (various references) | |
Farsi | مرثیه (Jeremiad), سوگ شعر. (various references) | |
Finnish | elegia. (various references) | |
French | élégie. (various references) | |
German | Elegie, Klagelied (dirge, lament, lamentation). (various references) | |
Greek | ελεγεία. (various references) | |
Hebrew | קי " (dirge, lament, lamentation, plaint, threnody), אל'י". (various references) | |
Hungarian | elégia, gyászdal (dirge, threnody). (various references) | |
Indonesian | elegi, nyanyian sedih. (various references) | |
Italian | elegia. (various references) | |
Japanese Kanji | 挽歌 (funeral song), 悲歌 (dirge, mournful melody), 悲曲 (plaintive melody, sad tune), "歌 (dirge), "詩 , "歌 (dirge, lament, sad song), エル"ー盤 (aerogram, angel, elbow, Electone, Electra complex, electric, electric guitar, electricity, electroluminescence, electron, electronic, electronic banking, electronic cooking, electronic cottage, electronic file, electronic mail, electronic money, electronic music, electronic office, electronic sound, electronics, elegance, elegant, element, elementary, elevation, elevator, elf, elm, elocution, elven, encapsulation, enclosure, encode, encoder, encoding, encounter, encyclopedia, engage, engagement, engagement ring, engine, engine brake, engineer, engineering, engineering plastics, enjoy, erect, erection, erogenous zone, Eroica, Eros, erotic, erotic and grotesque, erotic and grotesque nonsense, erotic production, erotica, eroticism, erotism, erotomania, Herman, Hermes, ignition key, long-playing record, LP). (various references) | |
Japanese Katakana | ひきょく (plaintive melody, sad tune, secret music), ひか (dirge, mournful melody, parity, subcutaneous), ば"か (funeral song, late summer, many articles, many changes), あいか (dirge, lament, sad song), あいし (message of condolence, sad story or history), エレジー , ちょうか (a catch, a hooked fish, being more than, dirge, excess, house in the middle of a town, leather boots, long boots, long epic song with shamisen accompaniment, merchant's family, morning glow, morning mist, the imperial family or household, type of waka). (various references) | |
Manx | maroon (maroon), bardoon (coronach, dead march, doleful song, funeral dirge). (various references) | |
Pig Latin | elegyay.(various references) | |
Portuguese | elegia (element, lament), elegíaco. (various references) | |
Romanian | elegie (dirge, elegiac, lament, lamentation, threnody). (various references) | |
Russian | элегия. (various references) | |
Serbo-Croatian | elegija (monody). (various references) | |
Spanish | elegía (lament), pensamiento triste. (various references) | |
Swedish | elegi. (various references) | |
Turkish | ağıt (coronach, dirge, elegiac, keening, lament, lamentation, mourning, threnode, threnody, wailing). (various references) | |
Ukranian | сумний наспів, елегія (lament). (various references) | |
Vietnamese | khúc bi thương. (various references) | |
Welsh | marwnad (lament). (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
| Language | Period | Translations |
| Latin | 500 BCE-Modern | ælinos, elegi. (various references) |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
Misspellings | |
"Elegy" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: allegy, efegy, egegy, Egley, elay, eleg, elegie, Eleigh, elergy, elesy, elevy, Eleys, Elgie, elgy, Eligio, ellegy, Ellory, Elvey, Epehy, eulegy, evlogy, exegi, Exlog, ileg, oleg, Welega. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
| # of Phoneme Matches | Pronunciation | Word(s) rhyming with "elegy" (pronounced e"lujē) |
| 4 | -l u j ē | analogy, anesthesiology, anthology, anthropology, apology, archaeology, archeology, astrology, bacteriology, biology, biotechnology, cardiology, chronology, cosmetology, cosmology, criminology, cytology, dendrochronology, dermatology, doxology, ecology, embryology, endocrinology, entomology, epidemiology, epistemology, ethnology, ethology, etiology, etymology, eulogy, genealogy, geology, geomorphology, gerontology, graphology, gynecology, histology, Hymnology, ideology, immunology, kinesiology, limnology, meteorology, methodology, microbiology, micropaleontology, mineralogy, morphology, mycology, mythology, neurology, numerology, oncology, ontology, ophthalmology, ornithology, otology, paleontology, pathology, penology, petrology, pharmacology, physiology, Pomology, psychology, radiology, rheumatology, seismology, serology, sociology, terminology, theology, toxicology, trilogy, urology, virology, zoology. |
| 3 | -u j ē | prodigy, strategy. |
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits. | ||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "e-e-g-l-y" | |
-1 letter: eely, glee, gley. | |
-2 letters: eel, eye, gee, gel, gey, lee, leg, ley, lye. | |
-3 letters: el, ye. | |
| Words containing the letters "e-e-g-l-y" | |
+1 letter: gleety, gleyed. | |
+2 letters: eagerly, goldeye, greenly. | |
+3 letters: delegacy, elegancy, eyeglass, gingeley, goldeyes, greedily, greenfly, layerage, legendry, legerity, levogyre, meagerly, meagrely, polygene, telegony. | |
+4 letters: agelessly, agreeably, allegedly, averagely, clergymen, elegantly, exigently, feelingly, genealogy, generally, genteelly, genuinely, germanely, gingeleys, gleefully, glyceride, glycerine, goldeneye, jeeringly, layerages, leeringly, legendary, megacycle, polygenes, seemingly, teemingly, teleology, veeringly, vegetably. | |
+5 letters: degradedly, designedly, eyeballing, eyeglasses, eyeletting, fleeringly, fleetingly, freezingly, galleryite, gamesomely, generality, generously, glycerides, glycerines, goldeneyes, gruesomely, lysogenies, lysogenise, lysogenize, megacycles, negatively, oxygenless, replevying, resignedly, selenology, semeiology, speleology, stereology, sweepingly, telegraphy, vengefully, yellowlegs. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
Hexadecimal (or equivalents, 770AD-1900s) (references)45 6C 65 67 79 |
| Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519; backwards) (references)
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| American Sign Language (origins from 1620-1817 in Italy and, especially, France) (references)
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| Semaphore (1791, in France) (references)
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| Braille (1829, in France) (references)
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Morse Code (1836) (references). .-.. . --. -.--. |
| Dancing Men (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1903) (references)
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Binary Code (1918-1938, probably earlier) (references)01000101 01101100 01100101 01100111 01111001 |
HTML Code (1990) (references)E l e g y |
ISO 10646 (1991-1993) (references)0045 006C 0065 0067 0079 |
| British Sign Language (Fingerspelling, BSL; 1992, British Deaf Association Dictionary of British Sign Language) (references)
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Encryption (beginner's substitution cypher): (references)3978717391 |
| 1. Definition 2. Synonyms 3. Crosswords 4. Usage: Modern | 5. Usage: Commercial 6. Images: Slideshow 7. Quotations: Familiar 8. Usage Frequency | 9. Expressions: Internet 10. Translations: Modern 11. Translations: Ancient 12. Derivations | 13. Rhymes 14. Anagrams 15. Orthography 16. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
