Pronounced: HAW-thorn ih-FEKT, noun
Notes: I had not heard of this word
Yesterday’s word
The word threnody is “a song of lamentation for the dead; elegy”
First usage
Our word came into English in the early 1600s
Background / Comments
I said yesterday that the word stirred a faint memory, but that I couldn’t remember where I’d come across it. Upon thinking more about it, it seems to be the kind of word I would have run across in the Nero Wolfe stories by Rex Stout, but I still cannot specifically remember the word. Our word came from the Greek word thrēnōidia, which came from thēnos (dirge) and ōidē (song).
Richard's Vocabulary Word-of-the-Day 