jeremiad

See also: jeremiád

English
WOTD – 29 January 2008

Etymology

From French jérémiade, from Jérémie, from Latin Ieremias, from Hebrew ירמיה (yirm'yá, “Jeremiah”). Named after biblical prophet Jeremiah, who lamented the moral state of Judah and predicted her downfall.

Pronunciation
  • (Received Pronunciation, US) IPA(key): /ˌd͡ʒɛɹ.əˈmaɪ.əd/
  • Audio (US)(file)
  • Rhymes: -aɪəd

Noun

jeremiad (plural jeremiads)

  1. A long speech or prose work that bitterly laments the state of society and its morals, and often contains a prophecy of its coming downfall.
    Synonyms: lament, lamentation, tirade; see also Thesaurus:diatribe
    • 1895, Mary Gaunt, The Moving Finger: A Digger's Christmas:
      "Father Maguire," he said in the broadest of Cork brogues, without the ghost of a smile on his grave Irish face, "is it a song yez wantin'? Well, thin, it's just a jeremiad I 'd be singin' yez, an' not another song at all, at all."
    • 2006 May 5, The Columbus Dispatch:
      “This is precisely the manner of Balkanization that Schlesinger cautioned us about in his prescient jeremiad on multiculturalism, The Disuniting of America.”
    • 2007 May 19, Charlotte Higgins, “US government trying to seize new Michael Moore film, says producer”, in The Guardian‎:
      Cannes is smacking its lips in anticipation of filmmaker and provocateur Michael Moore's latest jeremiad against the US administration, which receives its premiere at the film festival today.
    • 2011 July 18, John Cassidy, “Mastering the Machine”, in The New Yorker‎, →ISSN:
      His warnings ignored in Washington, Dalio issued more jeremiads to his clients. “If the economy goes down, it will not be a typical recession,” his newsletter said in January, 2008.
    • 2015 March 30, Michael Billington, “Look Back in Anger: how John Osborne liberated theatrical language”, in The Guardian‎:
      What few of us realised at the time was that Osborne, while endorsing most of Jimmy’s jeremiads, also had a sneaking sympathy for his father-in-law, Colonel Redfern, an upper-class relic of the Raj.

Translations

Further reading

Swedish

Noun

jeremiad c

  1. a jeremiad

Declension
Declension of jeremiad 
Singular Plural
Indefinite Definite Indefinite Definite
Nominative jeremiad jeremiaden jeremiader jeremiaderna
Genitive jeremiads jeremiadens jeremiaders jeremiadernas

See also

References
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