plangent

Latin plangēns, present participle of plangō (“I beat; I lament”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈplænd͡ʒənt/

plangent (comparative more plangent, superlative most plangent)

1. Having a loud, mournful sound.
   • 1879, Robert Louis Stevenson, The Story of a Lie, ch. 1:

     [S]how him a refined or powerful face, let him hear a plangent or a penetrating voice . . . and his mind was instantaneously awakened.

   • 1919, Ronald Firbank, Valmouth, Duckworth hardback edition, page 49:

     Since mid-day their plangent, disquieting cries had foretold its approach.

   • 2013 Sept. 22, Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, "Music Review: A Middle East Mourned and Celebrated in Suites," New York Times (retrieved 15 May 2014):

     In the lament about the massacre — the work’s second movement — he entered a more urgent register in the high reaches of the cello, but the sense of grief was more plangent than raw, devoid of any real outrage.

2. (rare) Beating, dashing, as waves.
   • 1922, Clark Ashton Smith, Desire of Vastness:

     What central sea with plume-plucked midnight strewn,

     Plangent to what enormous plenilune

     That lifts in silence, hinderless and stark?

• plangency
• plangently

plangent

1. third-person plural future active indicative of plangō