What's the difference between lament and plaint?

Lament


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To express or feel sorrow; to weep or wail; to mourn.
  • (v. t.) To mourn for; to bemoan; to bewail.
  • (v.) Grief or sorrow expressed in complaints or cries; lamentation; a wailing; a moaning; a weeping.
  • (v.) An elegy or mournful ballad, or the like.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Foster has long admired the speed with which these were built, and laments how Britain has dithered about London's airports.
  • (2) The screen-printing evening is taking place in Bushwick, an area known for – or lamented as – being the hippest part of Brooklyn.
  • (3) The debates and the campaign are increasingly covered as entertainment,” Rubio said, lamenting the networks’ hunt for ratings.
  • (4) Prior to the constitutional reform bill being introduced last July, Mandelson had lamented in an interview with the Financial Times that it was "not legally possible" for him to stand again as an MP.
  • (5) In an interview with the Qingdao Morning Post, one man lamented how in recent years his wife had frittered away 130,000 yuan (£13,500) of their hard-earned savings on Double Eleven purchases – thus dashing their dreams of buying a new home.
  • (6) If peerages are in effect being sold, the academics argue, “these could be thought of as the ‘average price’ per party.” Former Liberal Democrat peer, Matthew Oakeshott, who on leaving the Lords in May last year lamented that his efforts to uncover cash-for-honours deals across the parties had failed, told the Observer that the case against the system, and the parties, was now compelling.
  • (7) Alongside that political failing is a lamentable failure of the police command culture.
  • (8) Calling on Israel to “break with its lamentable track record” and hold wrongdoers responsible, the hard-hitting report commissioned by the UN human rights council lays most of the blame for Israel’s suspected violations at the feet of the country’s political and military leadership.
  • (9) He also expresses his lament that Australia’s $46 million bid, which earned one vote as the World Cup was controversially awarded to Qatar, never stood a chance.
  • (10) Farah addressed the media in Birmingham on Saturday, lamenting his name being “dragged through the mud” because of his links to Salazar, despite no allegations of wrongdoing against him personally.
  • (11) Although that guarantee is traditionally understood to prohibit intentional discrimination under existing laws, equal protection does not end there … to know the history of our nation is to understand its long and lamentable record of stymieing the right of racial minorities to participate in the political process.” Justice Elena Kagan, another of the court’s liberals, sat out of the case due to conflicts of interest.
  • (12) It's music that defines compassion, lament, and loss, to which you can only surrender in moist-eyed wonder.
  • (13) Or you might find it rather sad that someone who spends a lot of their time lamenting how society's unrealistic beauty standards are used to control and oppress women is a victim of those same standards.
  • (14) But recounting the story of one of the key experiences of European integration, the painter and decorator sounded elegiac, as if describing not current realities but those of a lamented past.
  • (15) The deputy prime minister, Bülent Arinc, one of the co-founders of the ruling Islamic-rooted Justice and Development party (AKP), made the comment while lamenting the moral decline of modern society.
  • (16) For veterans of the women's movement there may be something unnerving about hearing the familiar slogans from Tory mouths – a sense that, as a female columnist lamented recently of Mensch, these late converts are "the wrong kind" of feminists.
  • (17) Wenger, though, warmed to a familiar theme when he lamented the importance that is attached to incoming signings.
  • (18) Hollande vowed to tackle France's standing as the most pessimistic country in Europe , "perhaps in the world", lamenting: "There are countries at war who are more optimistic than us."
  • (19) On Twitter , Wade lamented what he called another “act of senseless gun violence” which meant “4 kids lost their mom for NO REASON”.
  • (20) "We didn't make any mistakes today," Poyet lamented.

Plaint


Definition:

  • (n.) Audible expression of sorrow; lamentation; complaint; hence, a mournful song; a lament.
  • (n.) An accusation or protest on account of an injury.
  • (n.) A private memorial tendered to a court, in which a person sets forth his cause of action; the exhibiting of an action in writing.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) He suggests that this is the dynamic that drives unthinking partisan allegiance ("What's most distinctive about the current presidential election and our political culture [is] … how unconditionally so many partisans back their side's every edict, plaint and stratagem"), as well as numerous key political frauds, from Saddam's WMDs to Obama's fake birth certificate to Romney's failure to pay taxes for 10 years.
  • (2) Ellie, by email As Ellie has perceptively summed up in her plaint, it would be easier to bring about peace in the Middle East this autumn than to find a fashion magazine that is not pushing pink coats.
  • (3) "Let us quit this indecent exercise of fatuous plaints, including raising hopes, even now, with talk of 'posthumous' conferment, when you know damned well that the Nobel committee does not indulge in such tradition.
  • (4) These consist either of slow- or delayed-release formulations of plaint 5-ASA (mesalazin) or sulpha-free azo-compounds of 5-ASA.
  • (5) This is not a plaint of the quasi-misogynistic and homophobic ones that have appeared in other, inferior rags, which can be summed up as "Liz 'That dress' Hurley turned Shane into a big queen".
  • (6) This is why it is worth carrying out.” Wilde was ever-dedicated to paradox – but this was one he sought to resolve with the familiar plaint: “Human nature will change.
  • (7) BALT magic catheter (PURSIL catheter) is a new catheter which is more flexible and plaint than the TRACKER-18 catheter because its mid-section and distal portion are made from polyurethane and silicon rather than polyethylene.
  • (8) They quote Sennett's plaint, "how can long-term purposes be pursued in a short-term society … how can a human being develop a narrative of identity and life history in a society composed of episodes and fragments".