lachrymose
/ˈlakrɪməʊs
/ /ˈlakrɪməʊz/adjective
1Tearful or given to weeping: she was pink-eyed and lachrymose
Synonyms
tearful, weeping, crying, teary, with tears in one's eyes, close to tears, on the verge of tears, sobbing, snivelling, whimpering;
emotional, sad, mournful, woeful, unhappy, depressed, gloomy, melancholy, low-spirited, despondent, downcast, low, glum, morose, sorrowful, joyless, disconsolate, doleful, maudlin, miserable, forlorn, grief-stricken, lugubrious
informal weepy, blubbering, down, down in the mouth, blue
literary dolorous
rare larmoyant
1.1Inducing tears; sad: a lachrymose children’s classic...
- He now almost disappears from the story, the rest of which relates, with lachrymose sentiment and many frissons of horror (including a hint of necrophilia), the misfortunes and eventual joys of young Melvil and Monimia.
- ‘Surely,’ he wrote, ‘it is time to break with the lachrymose theory of pre-Revolutionary woe, and to adopt a view more in accord with historic truth.’
Synonyms
tragic, sad, poignant, heart-rending, tear-jerking, moving, melancholy, depressing, plaintive;
mawkish, sentimental
British informal soppy
Derivatives
lachrymosely
- Its wild swings between the lurid and the lachrymosely sentimental are much uglier, however.
- You might have thought that Leonora would be just calmly loathing and he lachrymosely contrite.
- Where else can you hear a show lachrymosely titled ‘The Saddest Music in the World’?
lachrymosity
- And so The Wild Boy is a sad novel, tugging the heartstrings with some of the rhapsodic lachrymosity that felled Little Nell.
- Tales of horror and lachrymosity abound.
- It has nothing to do with my state of mind at the time or any tendency to lachrymosity.
Origin
Mid 17th century (in the sense 'like tears; liable to exude in drops'): from Latin lacrimosus, from lacrima 'tear'.