lamentation

Meaning

Noun

• The act of lamenting.
• A sorrowful cry; a lament.
• Specifically, mourning.
• lamentatio, (part of) a liturgical Bible text (from the book of Job) and its musical settings, usually in the plural; hence, any dirge
• A group of swans.

Origin

• Recorded since 1375, from Latin lāmentātiō, from the deponent verb lāmentor, from lāmentum, itself from a Proto-Indo-European *leh₂-, presumed ultimately imitative. Replaced Old English cwiþan. Lament is a 16th-century back-formation.