Jeremiad
WordNet
noun
(1) A long and mournful complaint
"A jeremiad against any form of government"
WiktionaryText
Etymology
From < < < .
was a biblical prophet who lamented the moral state of Judah and predicted her downfall.
Noun
- 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.
Quotations
- 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: The Columbus Dispatch, May 5
- “This is precisely the manner of Balkanization that Schlesinger cautioned us about in his prescient jeremiad on multiculturalism, The Disuniting of America.”
- 2007, The Guardian, http://film.guardian.co.uk/cannes2007/story/0,,2083430,00.html
- 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.