Dictionary

jeremiad en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• (US) audio
• /ˌd͡ʒɛɹ.əˈmaɪ.əd/ (Received-Pronunciation, US)

Etymology

From French jérémiade, from Jérémie, from Latin Ieremias, from Hebrew ירמיה (yirm'yá, “Jeremiah”). Named after biblical prophet Jeremiah, who lamented the moral state of Judah and predicted her downfall.

Meanings

1. A long speech or prose work that bitterly laments the state of society and its morals, and often contains a prophecy of its coming downfall.
   • According to the ‘business as usual’ school of modern historians, the millennial preoccupations of Glaber and Wulfstan hold no more significance than the jeremiads of the gullible and doom-laden who agonise in every society - the medieval equivalents of believers in UFOs, the Bermuda Triangle, and the X files. 1999, Robert Lacey, Danny Danziger, The Year 1000: What life was like at the turn of The First Millennium, London: Abacus, published 2000, page 187:
   • Near-synonyms: diatribe, tirade, lamentation, lament, litany; see also Thesaurus:diatribe
   • His warnings ignored in Washington, Dalio issued more jeremiads to his clients. “If the economy goes down, it will not be a typical recession,” his newsletter said in January, 2008. 2011 July 18, John Cassidy, “Mastering the Machine”, in The New Yorker, →ISSN, archived from the original on 05 Mar 2019:
   • “This is precisely the manner of Balkanization that Schlesinger cautioned us about in his prescient jeremiad on multiculturalism, “The Disuniting of America.”” 2006 May 5, The Columbus Dispatch:
   • What few of us realised at the time was that Osborne, while endorsing most of Jimmy’s jeremiads, also had a sneaking sympathy for his father-in-law, Colonel Redfern, an upper-class relic of the Raj. 2015 March 30, Michael Billington, “Look Back in Anger: how John Osborne liberated theatrical language”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 24 Apr 2022:
   • Cannes is smacking its lips in anticipation of filmmaker and provocateur Michael Moore's latest jeremiad against the US administration, which receives its premiere at the film festival today. 2007 May 19, Charlotte Higgins, “US government trying to seize new Michael Moore film, says producer”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 09 Mar 2021:
   • "Father Maguire," he said in the broadest of Cork brogues, without the ghost of a smile on his grave Irish face, "is it a song yez wantin'? Well, thin, it's just a jeremiad I 'd be singin' yez, an' not another song at all, at all." 1895, Mary Gaunt, The Moving Finger: A Digger's Christmas:

Forms

Relateds

Jeremiah

Synonyms

litany · admonition · rant · diatribe · lamentation · jeremiad · lament · impugnation · condemnation · slanging match · dithyramb · screed · polemic · diatribe · tirade · j'accuse · philippic · tirade · harangue

Translations (16)

no jeremiade (long speech or prose work) · sv klagovisa (long speech or prose work) · nl jeremiade (long speech or prose work) · fi valitusvirsi (long speech or prose work) · fi vuodatus (long speech or prose work) · de Jeremiade (long speech or prose work) · es jeremiada (long speech or prose work) · fi jeremiadi (long speech or prose work) · sh jadikovka (long speech or prose work) · hu jeremiád (long speech or prose work) · sv jeremiad (long speech or prose work) · pl jeremiada (long speech or prose work) · ru иеремиа́да (long speech or prose work) · fr jérémiade (long speech or prose work) · no klagesang (long speech or prose work) · ca jeremiada (long speech or prose work)