- deplore
- deplore, lament, bewail, bemoan mean to manifest grief or sorrow for something. All carry an implication of weeping or crying which is commonly purely figurative.Deplore implies keen and profound regret especially for what is regarded as irreparable, calamitous, or destructive of something good or worth keeping{
ev'n rival wits did Voiture's death deplore— Pope
}{deplore a quarrel between friends
}{they deplore the divorce between the language as spoken and the language as written—T. S. Eliot
}Lament commonly implies a strong or demonstrative expression of sorrow or mourning. In contrast to deplore, it usually does imply utterance, sometimes passionate, sometimes fulsome{yet I lament what long has ceased to be— Shelley
}{he made the newly returned actress a tempting offer, instigating some journalist friends of his at the same time to lament over the decay of the grand school of acting— Shaw
}Bewail and bemoan imply poignant sorrow finding an outlet in words or cries, bewail commonly suggesting the louder, bemoan, the more lugubrious expression of grief or, often, of a mere grievance or a complaint{the valet bewailing the loss of his wages— Alexander
}{even at the time when our prose speech was as near to perfection as it is ever likely to be, its critics were bemoaning its corruption— Ellis
}{and all wept, and bewailed her— Lk 8:52
}{the silver swans her hapless fate bemoan, in notes more sad than when they sing their own— Pope
}Contrasted words: vaunt, crow, *boast, brag
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
