What’s an Elegiac?
This morning an interesting headline caught my eye on the New York Times web site:
In Final News Conference, Bush Strikes Elegiac Tone
(No, REALLY, this is a blog about language, not politics!)
I have to confess that I had no idea what “Elegiac” means, so I looked it up. The first definition I found was a little less than satisfactory:
Noting a distich or couplet the first line of which is a dactylic hexameter and the second a pentameter, or a verse differing from the hexameter by suppression of the arsis or metrically unaccented part of the third and the sixth foot.
Since this definition introduced more words that I don’t understand, it seemed like a step backwards in my quest for knowledge, so I ignored it. Instead of giving up though, I persevered and finally figured out what “elegiac” means:
- used in, suitable for, or resembling an elegy.
- expressing sorrow or lamentation: elegiac strains.
An elegy, as I’m sure you know, is “a mournful, melancholy, or plaintive poem, especially a funeral song or a lament for the dead.”
So coming back to the Times article – this headline strikes me as odd for two reasons:
- No one died
- Press conferences aren’t exactly poetic (See how I generalized? I told you this isn’t a political blog.)
Unless, of course, the author was aiming a little higher than the literal meaning of the word, and believes that President Bush was lamenting (in a sorrowful tone) the demise of his presidency in its final weeks. Well, yes actually, that sounds like a pretty plausible explanation. Which would make this blog post a little bit of a waste. But am I going to delete it? Not so much. (Don’t you hate question-talking? I do too.)
But then again, it may just be that the author’s Word thesaurus threw out “elegiac” as a synonymn for “sad”, and he was under a tight deadline which didn’t leave him time to look it up. You never know with these things.
