mourner
nounUS /ˈmɔɹnɚ/ · UK /ˈmɔːnə/
Etymology From Middle English mourner, mornere, equivalent to mourn + -er.
1
Someone filled with or expressing grief or sadness, especially over a death; someone who mourns.
- Disuniter of all affection—awful seal to life's nothingness—warning and witness of power and judgment—Death has always enow of terror and sorrow, even when there are many to comfort the mourner, when the path has been smoothed for the sufferer, and life offers all its best and brightest to soothe the survivor; […]1830, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Juvenile Forget Me Not 1831, The Miniature, pages 37–45:
- I stood close to heartsick mourners and worried that I would not sustain the enormousness of their spiritual weight.2024 September 17, Lauren DePino, “I Sang at Hundreds of Funerals. This Is What I Learned About Grief.”, in The New York Times Magazine:
2
A person attending a funeral or otherwise participating in rituals related to bereavement.
3
In certain cultures, a person hired to participate in funerary rituals, sometimes by making a conspicuous and/or conventional show of grief; hired mourner.
4
Any of a number of suboscine birds in the related familes Tityridae and Tyrannidae.
- Derived terms
- hired mourner, mourneress