a. [f. as prec. + -OUS.] Characterized by, expressing or causing mourning; doleful, mournful, sorrowful.
1601. Dent, Pathw. Heaven (1831), 305. The sea shall roar and make a noise in most doleful and lugubrious manner.
1639. Hammond, Pastors Motto, Wks. 1684, IV. 546. To act no passionate, lugubrious, tragical part.
1792. Mary Wollstonecr., Rights Wom., vi. 267. The severe graces of Virtue must have a lugubrious appearance to them.
1847. Lewes, Hist. Philos. (1867), II. 567. A grotesque and lugubrious farce was played on the day of his quitting the establishment.
1877. Black, Green Past., xxi. (1878), 173. The enforced silence of the room was rather a painful and lugubrious business.
1900. Q. Rev., July, 113. The lugubrious fresco in the Campo Santo at Pisa.
Hence Lugubriously adv., Lugubriousness.
1848. Webster, Lugubriously.
1860. Gen. P. Thompson, Audi Alt., III. cxv. 49. It points lugubriously to the fact, that the ways of dishonour are not always ways of pleasantness.
1879. R. H. Elliot, Written on Foreheads, I. 16. They did not cultivate lugubriousness in general.
1900. H. W. Smyth, Greek Melic Poets, 389. Some of his [Bacchylides’] lugubriousness is no doubt mere literary veneer.
