{"id":2002,"date":"2023-08-01T10:53:49","date_gmt":"2023-08-01T14:53:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/?p=2002"},"modified":"2023-08-01T11:09:53","modified_gmt":"2023-08-01T15:09:53","slug":"word-of-the-week-lachrymose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/2023\/08\/01\/word-of-the-week-lachrymose\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Week! Lachrymose"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Crying<\/a>Admit it: as summer wanes and the realities of more work loom ahead, many students and faculty alike feel lachrymose. We want the restful pace of summer, if not its sweltering heat, to continue forever. We get misty-eyed as the leaves turn but we are too damned busy to sit down under a tree and let them cover us, like some Peanuts character.<\/p>\n

Oh the tears we cry. I learned the word lacrimas<\/em> when in Spain. I then began to use its cousin in English, from time to time. The origin is Latin, like so many words that elevate the register of formal prose. From The Online Etymology Dictionary<\/a>, we have this: from Latin\u00a0lacrimosus<\/span><\/em>\u00a0“tearful, sorrowful, weeping,” also “causing tears, lamentable,” from\u00a0lacrima<\/span><\/em>,\u00a0lacryma<\/span><\/em> “a tear.” First usage given dates to the 1660s, from my favorite epoch, the Age of Enlightenment. Imagine a time when thinkers sought to relieve us of many tears by promising us a better future, one based on Reason and freedom from superstitions. I get lachrymose longing for such a time in our current age of unreason.<\/p>\n

When talking about sorrow, I apply a wine-taster’s test. I tend to prefer the “mouthfeel” of lugubrious, adding to its sound its appearance in one or two favorite novels. That word connotes something dismal as well as tearful, a funeral dirge perhaps. It’s not an exact synonym. I’ll feature it as a future WOTW later.<\/p>\n

When I was a rather sadistic and cynical undergrad, every year in late July or early August I’d invoke Jim Morrison’s lugubrious voice, in the Doors’ song “Summer’s Almost Gone.”\u00a0 It provided surefire and tearful torments for my friends and roommates. The video below comes from Rhino Records, so it’s unlikely to vanish from YouTube over copyright infringement. Irony of ironies: the little commercials we endure before videos were all about productivity software! Now THAT is lachrymose.<\/p>\n