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Plangent vs Dolorous - What's the difference?

plangent | dolorous |

As adjectives the difference between plangent and dolorous

is that plangent is having a loud, mournful sound while dolorous is solemnly or ponderously sad.

plangent

English

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • Having a loud, mournful sound.
  • * 1879 , , The Story of a Lie , ch. 1:
  • [S]how him a refined or powerful face, let him hear a plangent or a penetrating voice . . . and his mind was instantaneously awakened.
  • * 1919, , Duckworth hardback edition, page 49:
  • Since mid-day their plangent , disquieting cries had foretold its approach.
  • * 2013 Sept. 22, Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, " Music Review: A Middle East Mourned and Celebrated in Suites," New York Times (retrieved 15 May 2014):
  • In the lament about the massacre — the work’s second movement — he entered a more urgent register in the high reaches of the cello, but the sense of grief was more plangent than raw, devoid of any real outrage.
  • (rare) Beating, dashing, as waves.
  • * 1922 , :
  • What central sea with plume-plucked midnight strewn,
    Plangent to what enormous plenilune
    That lifts in silence, hinderless and stark?

    dolorous

    English

    Alternative forms

    * (l)

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Solemnly or ponderously sad.
  • * 1596 , , The Faerie Queene , Book 5, Canto 4:
  • Through dolorous despaire, which she conceyved,
    Into the Sea her selfe did headlong throw,
    Thinking to have her griefe by death bereaved.
  • * 1645 , , "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity", stanza 14:
  • . . . Hell itself will pass away,
    And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day.
  • * 1859 , , A Tale of Two Cities , ch. 30:
  • From this prison here of horror, whence I every hour tend nearer and nearer to destruction, I send you . . . the assurance of my dolorous and unhappy service.
  • * '>citation
  • * 2001 June 24, Stefan Kanfer, " Author, Teacher, Witness," Time :
  • As World War II came to a close, the gaunt and dolorous child was liberated at yet another death camp, Buchenwald.