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“The people are drifting from door to door / Can’t find no heaven I don’t care where they go.” So sang Nehemiah Curtis “Skip” James on a Depression-era recording of his song “Hard Time Killing Floor Blues.” James’s somber lyrics as well as his otherworldly falsetto and distinctive minor-key fingerpicking may be aptly described by the adjective plaintive—deeply expressive, like much of the blues. Plaintive comes from the Middle English word plaintif, meaning “grieving,” a borrowing from an identical Anglo-French word that itself was formed from the Anglo-French noun plaint, a word meaning “lamentation.” (Plaint was also adopted directly into English to refer to expressions of sorrow, mourning, or regret.) Plaintif is the source too of the familiar legal term plaintiff, which refers to someone who presents a legal action or complaint to a court. But while only some people become plaintiffs, all are capable of plaintiveness, whether in song or just a world-weary sigh.
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Examples of plaintive in a Sentence
Amanda Petrusich, The New Yorker, 30 Sep. 2024
Kathy becomes our narrator, her mile-a-minute Midwestern patter adding a layer of percussion to the rumbling engines and plaintive crooning of ’60s rock ‘n’ roll on the soundtrack.
—Katie Walsh, Los Angeles Times, 20 June 2024
The plaintive ballad spent five weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was nominated for Song and Record of the Year.
—Lester Fabian Brathwaite, EW.com, 24 July 2024
Yet its plaintive tone underlined a deeper concern.
—Ned Temko, The Christian Science Monitor, 18 July 2024
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Dictionary Entries Near plaintive
Cite this Entry
“Plaintive.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/plaintive. Accessed 8 Nov. 2024.
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