ISEE/SSAT Vocabulary BuilderWordsPplaintive
ISEE/SSAThard
plaintive
Meaning: sounding sad and mournful
plaintive in a sentence
How plaintive is used in real sentences:
A plaintive melody drifted from the empty theater.
The violin's plaintive phrase left the concert hall utterly quiet.
“At such passages, Mara sometimes whispered a plaintive "How could you?" whose soft, sorrowing sound briefly broke the room's silence.”
— from the passage The Unsmoothed Voice
Synonyms for plaintive
Other words for plaintive — mournful, doleful and melancholy — carry the same meaning.
- mournful
- doleful
- melancholy
Antonyms of plaintive
Words that mean the opposite of plaintive:
- cheerful
- joyful
- buoyant
Where it comes from
From Old French plaintif, meaning 'lamenting.'
Memory hook
PLAINTIVE contains PLAINT, an old word for a complaint: a plaintive voice sounds sorrowful.