What's the difference between
and
Enter two words to compare and contrast their definitions, origins, and synonyms to better understand how those words are related.

Macabre vs Elegiac - What's the difference?

macabre | elegiac |

As adjectives the difference between macabre and elegiac

is that macabre is representing or personifying death while elegiac is of, or relating to an elegy.

As a noun elegiac is

a poem composed in the couplet style of classical elegies: a line of dactylic hexameter followed by a line of dactylic pentameter.

macabre

English

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • Representing or personifying death.
  • * 1941 , George C. Booth, Mexico's School-made Society , page 106
  • There are four fundamental figures. One is a man measuring and comparing his world In front of him is a macabre figure, a cadaver ready to be dissected. This symbolizes man serving mankind. The third figure is the scientist, the man who makes use of the information gathered in the first two fields of mensurable science.
  • Obsessed with death or the gruesome.
  • * 1993 , Theodore Ziolkowski, "Wagner's Parsifal'' between Mystery and Mummery", ''in'' Werner Sollors (ed.), ''The Return of Thematic Criticism , pages 274-275
  • Indeed, in the 1854 draft of Tristan he planned to have Parzival visit the dying knight, and both operas display the same macabre obsession with bloody gore and festering wounds.
  • Ghastly, shocking, terrifying.
  • * 1927 [1938], , Introduction
  • The appeal of the spectrally macabre is generally narrow because it demands from the reader a certain degree of imagination and a capacity for detachment from every-day life.

    Synonyms

    * (ghastly) ghastly, horrifying, shocking, terrifying

    Derived terms

    * danse macabre

    References

    Anagrams

    * English borrowed terms ----

    elegiac

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Of, or relating to an elegy.
  • the elegiac distich or couplet, consisting of a dactylic hexameter and pentameter
  • Expressing sorrow or mourning.
  • * Elizabeth Browning
  • Elegiac griefs, and songs of love.

    Quotations

    * 1808 , , Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field , "Canto the Third: Introduction": *: Hast thou no elegiac verse *: For Brunswick's venerable hearse?

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A poem composed in the couplet style of classical elegies: a line of dactylic hexameter followed by a line of dactylic pentameter
  • * {{quote-book, 1748, John Upton, Critical Observations on Shakespeare, page=385 citation
  • , passage=His saphics are worse, if possible, than his elegiacs }}