Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A literary work or speech expressing a bitter lament or a righteous prophecy of doom.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Lamentation; an utterance of grief or sorrow; a complaining tirade: used with a spice of ridicule or mockery, implying either that the grief itself is unnecessarily great, or that the utterance of it is tediously drawn out and attended with a certain satisfaction to the utterer.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun A tale of sorrow, disappointment, or complaint; a doleful story; a dolorous tirade; -- generally used satirically.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A long
speech orprose work thatbitterly laments the state ofsociety and itsmorals , and often contains aprophecy of its comingdownfall .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a long and mournful complaint
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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The expectation of jeremiad is so deeply ingrained in Americans’ political consciousness that it might seem to be universal.
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The expectation of jeremiad is so deeply ingrained in Americans’ political consciousness that it might seem to be universal.
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Keillor’s jeremiad is wrong on so many levels, and proceeds from a place of such monumental self-regard and fundamental misinformation, that a proper rebuttal would require an entire afternoon and a minimum of ten double-spaced pages.
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Who says calling up the local hub and filling up the whole fifteen-minute block of the operator's voicemail with a howling spoken word jeremiad about FRAUD and LIES doesn't get you anywhere?
Nick Mamatas' Journal nihilistic_kid 2008
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The New Yorker today is just as willing to publish a barely illustrated, three-part, 30,000-word jeremiad on climate change as founding editor Harold Ross was happy to devote an entire issue to one article on the aftermath of the Hiroshima bombing.
Good Magazine: The 51 Best Magazines Ever William Harryman 2007
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In 1980, George W.S. Trow, a veteran New Yorker staff writer and one of the founding editors of The National Lampoon, published a 25,000-word jeremiad decrying the evils of television.
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America has a grand tradition of the "jeremiad," a form named after the prophet Jeremiah who was sent to tell a nation to repent before it was too late.
Briallen Hopper: Obama and the Apocalypse: A Religious Response to the BP Oil Spill 2010
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It helpfully reasserts the book's argument; and by its resort to invective — "jeremiad," "screeds," "emotionally gratifying," "capitalist hobgoblins," etc. — his letter offers an instructive insight into Reich's own thought processes.
'Supercapitalism': An Exchange Reich, Robert B. 2008
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The whole of the first act consists of one emphatic jeremiad by Cicero, about the desperate condition of Rome as it then was, its factiousness, its servility, -- a jeremiad which is continued at the end of the act, by the chorus, in rhymed stanzas.
The Critics Versus Shakspere A Brief for the Defendant Francis Asbury Smith 1876
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"The Great Gatsby" is a kind of jeremiad (as any student of Bercovitch's will tell you).
NYT > Home Page By WEN STEPHENSON 2010
sera commented on the word jeremiad
A long and mournful complaint
"a jeremiad against any form of government"
"the function of a jeremiad is to premonish"
August 13, 2007
mollusque commented on the word jeremiad
was a bullfrog . . .
July 16, 2008
ofravens commented on the word jeremiad
*is having a happy X-Files flashback right now*
July 16, 2008
Prolagus commented on the word jeremiad
Who cares that the crones and the predikants, using separate sets of words, murmur jeremiads that too much optimism is bad for the soul, and attracts perhaps more attention from God than, strictly speaking, is desirable?
(Gregory Maguire, Confession of an ugly stepsister)
January 28, 2009
milosrdenstvi commented on the word jeremiad
I wonder what the essential difference between this and a rodomontade is.
March 19, 2009
jwjarvis commented on the word jeremiad
the same sense of dread animates Matthew Crawford’s jeremiad, just as it animated The Crafstman
May 19, 2010