Word of the Day

: August 24, 2024

jeremiad

noun jair-uh-MYE-ud

What It Means

Jeremiad refers to a long cautionary or angry rant about something. It can also refer to a similarly prolonged lamentation, or expression of great sorrow or deep sadness.

// His jeremiad about trivial problems with the campsite didn’t go over well with his friends.

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jeremiad in Context

“One of the most exciting exhibitions now on view is Josh Kline’s ‘Project for a New American Century’ at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Kline uses video, sculpture and installation to explore the social, political and environmental crises we are facing. ... But Kline’s work transcends the jeremiad and grapples with the persistence of beauty as a basic adaptive tool. And unlike any other artist I’ve encountered recently, he works simultaneously in the utopian and dystopian mode.” — Philip Kennicott, The Washington Post, 8 June 2023

Did You Know?

Jeremiah was a Jewish prophet, who lived from about 650 to 570 B.C. and spent his days lambasting the Hebrews for their false worship and social injustice and denouncing the king for his selfishness, materialism, and inequities. When not calling on his people to quit their wicked ways, he was lamenting his own lot; a portion of the biblical Book of Jeremiah is devoted to his "confessions," a series of lamentations on the hardships endured by a prophet with an unpopular message. Nowadays, English speakers use Jeremiah for a pessimistic person and jeremiad for the way these Jeremiahs carry on. The word jeremiad was borrowed from the French, who coined it as jérémiade.