Words & WritingGreek → English
Elegy
/ˈɛlɪdʒi/noun
A poem of lament, usually for someone who has died.
The Greek roots
ἔλεγος
élegos
lament, mourning song
Literally: “song of mourning”
Follow a root:ἔλεγος1 word
The story of the word
In Greek, ἐλεγεία named a metre rather than a mood: couplets of hexameter and pentameter, used for war exhortations, drinking songs, epitaphs and seduction alike. Tyrtaeus wrote elegy to push Spartans into battle. Latin poets narrowed it to love, English narrowed it to grief, and Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard fixed that sense in 1751. The modern elegy keeps the sorrow and has dropped the metre that actually defined the ancient one.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → French → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
elegiacelegist
In a sentence
The last poem in the book is an elegy for his brother.
She read the elegy at the graveside without once looking up.