elegiacEnglishOxford English Thesauruselegiac adjective a movingly elegiac piece for small orchestra: mournful, melancholic, melancholy, plaintive, sorrowful, sad, lamenting, doleful; funereal, dirge-like; touching, moving, poignant; literary dolorous; rare threnodic, threnodial. ▷antonyms cheerful.elegiac Oxford Dictionary of English