lamentable

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English lamentable, also lementable,^[2] borrowed from Old French lamentable^[3][4][5] and directly borrowed from Latin lāmentābilis (“full of sorrow, mournful; deplorable”),^[5][3][4][6] from lāmentor (“to wail, moan, weep”),^[7][5][8] from lāmentum (“a wailing, moaning, weeping”).^[5][7] The Middle English Dictionary and Etymonline name only the Latin,^[2][7] while Klein and Merriam-Webster Unabridged give the French as an intermediate or parallel source.^[8][6] Anglo-Norman lamentable is recorded from about 1360–79, as "mournful, doleful".^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

Sad, sorrowful, expressing grief: He began to crye With lamentable vois, in Hoccleve about 1422.^[2] Etymonline dates this sense to about 1400,^[7] while the OED's first quotation, from a translation of Higden's Polychronicon, comes from a manuscript of before 1475.^[5]

Semantic evolution

In Middle English the word mostly described voices, tears and partings full of grief, as when Margery Kempe calls a leave-taking ful lamentabyl.^[2] From there it moved from the sorrow felt to the thing that calls for it: to be lamented, pitiable, deplorable, a sense Etymonline dates to the early 15th century and the OED first quotes from Lydgate, in a manuscript of about 1460.^[7][5] This sense has since taken over, and "mournful" is now rare or archaic.^[5][3][10] By the 17th century it could be used lightly or with contempt for something wretchedly bad, as in Stillingfleet in 1676;^[5] Johnson (1755) calls this a ludicrous or low sense and defines it as pitiful, despicable, citing the same writer.^[11][5] Dialect use went further: it meant "unpleasant" in the north of Ireland, and in Suffolk, Surrey and Sussex it was an intensifier, as in lamentable bad or larmentable purty weather.^[12] As "sorrowful", Middle English also had lamentacious, from the late 14th century.^[7]

Timeline

• c. 1422 – sad, sorrowful, expressing grief.^[2]
• c. 1460 – to be lamented; pitiable, deplorable.^[5] Etymonline dates this sense to the early 15th century.^[7]
• 1676 – jocular or trivial: wretchedly bad, pitiful.^[5]
• 1748 – noun, plural, laments (obsolete), in Richardson's Clarissa.^[5]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Calling for regret or sorrow; deplorable, pitiable: a lamentable failure of planning.^[10][6][5]
2. Wretchedly bad; pitiful or despicable: a lamentable excuse for a meal.^[5][11]
3. Full of or expressing grief; mournful, doleful (archaic): a lamentable wail.^[5][10][6]

Word family

• lamentably
• lamentableness
• unlamentable

Related words

• lament
• lamentation

Usage notes

Merriam-Webster Unabridged puts the stress on the second syllable and gives the first as an occasional variant,^[6] while Collins and the Shorter Oxford stress the first.^[10][3] The OED lists both.^[5]

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
7. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
8. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
9. ^ Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
10. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
11. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
12. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)