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Expressive of sorrow or melancholy; mournful; sad. "The most plaintive ditty." Landor. -- Plain"tive*ly, adv. -- Plain"tive*ness, n.

A plaintive cry of, or like that of, a sheep. The bleat of fleecy sheep. Chapman's Homer.

Plaintively. See Doloroso.

Plaintive; pathetic; -- used adverbially as a musical direction.

Belonging to elegy, or written in elegiacs; plaintive; expressing sorrow or lamentation; as, an elegiac lay; elegiac strains. Elegiac griefs, and songs of love. Mrs. Browning.

A mournful or plaintive poem; a funereal song; a poem of lamentation. Shak.

Majestic as the voice sometimes became, there was forever in it an essential character of plaintiveness. Hawthorne.

Plural of eye; obsolete, or used only in poetry. Shak. With such a plaintive gaze their eyne Are fastened upwardly on mine. Mrs. Browning.

Plaintive; -- a term applied to a mournful or pathetic movement or style. Moore.

a wild dove (Zenaidura macroura) found throughout the United States; -- so named from its plaintive note. Called also Carolina dove. See Illust. under Dove. -- Mourning warbler (Zoöl.), an American ground warbler (Geothlypis Philadelphia). The male has the head, neck, and chest, deep ash-gray, mixed with black on the…

See Plaintive. [Obs.] Prior.

World; especially, the common European species (Turtur vulgaris), which is noted for its plaintive note, affectionate disposition, and devotion to its mate.

. Violent gesture and vociferation naturally shake the hearts of the ignorant. Spectator. Plaintive strains succeeding the vociferations of emotion or of pain. Byron.

To utter a plaintive cry, as some animals; to mean with a childish noise; to complain, or to tell of sorrow, distress, or the like, in a plaintive, nasal tone; hence, to complain or to beg in a mean, unmanly way; to moan basely. "Whining plovers." Spenser. The hounds were . . . staying their coming, but with a whining…