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plaintive
in a sentence

show 189 more with this conextual meaning
  • They will growl with their ears back, they will howl plaintively, they will no longer be her friends.†   (source)
  • "You may have more if you wish," says a plaintive voice.†   (source)
  • And he says to me, I swear it, it's true, he actually says tome...This endless conversation, the tone plaintive but oddly cheerful, flew around and around in a circle.†   (source)
  • "Oh, Melody, if only I could make your hurt go away," she says plaintively.†   (source)
  • "The thing is, Professor," said Filch plaintively, "the headmaster will have to listen to me this time.†   (source)
  • She looked plaintively into his eyes.†   (source)
  • "My, but I wish there were no wind," Mrs Whatsit said plaintively.†   (source)
  • It passes through granite with so little resistance that its sound is far less snarly than many wood saws of the power type; a diamond wheel makes a single, high-pitched scream— very plaintive.†   (source)
  • "When are they going to fight?" he asked plaintively.†   (source)
  • He could hear in his mind's ear the blood-stirring and intricate rhythms of the ekwe and the udu and the ogene, and he could hear his own flute weaving in and out of them, decorating them with a colourful and plaintive tune.†   (source)
  • She made a sound I had not heard them make before, a plaintive shriek.†   (source)
  • Now jokiness had made way for melodrama, or plaintiveness.†   (source)
  • "What am I gonna do?" she asked plaintively.†   (source)
  • The day passed as it always did—in slow motion, with a thousand plaintive glances at the clock.†   (source)
  • She was laughing, her head tilted back, and then I heard Holiday howling plaintively, for I was back where we had both once lived.†   (source)
  • ?" he asked plaintively.†   (source)
  • But there was something plaintive about her request that made it impossible to turn her down.†   (source)
  • RAAAWK " The griffin croaked plaintively as if asking permission—as if it was obeying my order to stop, but didn't like it.†   (source)
  • But where And then a ship's horn, plaintive and lost, sounded in the distance.†   (source)
  • I wondered vaguely, as the hours passed, as the smoke of the cafe grew thicker and the faded curtain of the little lamplit stage rose and fell, and robust women sang there, the light glittering on their paste jewels, their rich, soft voices often plaintive, exquisitely sad-I wondered vaguely what it would be to feel this loss, this outrage, and be justified in it, be deserving of sympathy, of solace.†   (source)
  • I can't take a rat home on the subway either," Clary said plaintively.†   (source)
  • It was a disconcerting picture; something about the wolf's plaintive posture made him look forlorn.†   (source)
  • It was all I had, just a plaintive cry to a God Who was with me, but Whose ways were becoming unclear to me.†   (source)
  • Eventually, the boys began to look at her with plaintive expressions: they were confused, in pain.†   (source)
  • 'It's not an apology,' Roger said plaintively.†   (source)
  • It was sad to hear their plaintive voices in that candle-lit room.†   (source)
  • But at the end of his scientific articles, there was always a plaintive sentence about how much more hands-on, real-world research needed to be done before the decision tree could be used in clinical practice.†   (source)
  • It seemed to me a most plaintive request.†   (source)
  • The weather's about to change," he practically cried out to me in a voice charged with the plaintive throb of his special time of life.†   (source)
  • "Well, that's what's the matter with most people," Leona insisted, plaintively, "ain't got nobody to be with.†   (source)
  • Her little patent leather pocketbook plaintively matches her pumps.†   (source)
  • Not a sound of distress, not a plaintive cry, nothing but mass agony and silence.†   (source)
  • The plaintive Merciful Jesuses, lightly sprinkled with sobs, were lost on her ears.†   (source)
  • (Plaintively) Walter Lee—why don't we just try to talk about it ....WALTER: (Not listening) I been out talking with people who understand me†   (source)
  • I loved his howl, which I could both hear and feel: long and plaintive, woebegone and heartsore, filled with yearning for what used to be and for what would never come again.†   (source)
  • "Who do I do?" he asked plaintively.†   (source)
  • Break off the tiny fingers, bend the flat feet, loosen the hair, twist the head around, and the thing made one sound—a sound they said was the sweet and plaintive cry "Mama," but which sounded to me like the bleat of a dying lamb, or, more precisely, our icebox door opening on rusty hinges in July.†   (source)
  • The sound of the twanging strings, and the appealing vibration of his young voice in a plaintive minor air, came over to her.†   (source)
  • One by one, the other members of the hidden dwarf choir joined in the song, filling Tronjheim with the plaintive beauty of their music.†   (source)
  • He would never forget it: the crow's enormous plaintive beak up next to her face.†   (source)
  • And there it was, just as she was coming up the walk, the plaintive whine: Lewis lost his new bravado and returned to his old self.†   (source)
  • His voice sounds plaintive, not angry, as he lectures: You do not administer an antibiotic to a person with meningitis until you have done a spinal tap and know the variety of meningitis and thus which drug will work.†   (source)
  • 'What correspondence?' asked the chaplain plaintively in rising exasperation.†   (source)
  • David repeated Max's name in the same calm, plaintive tone.†   (source)
  • When I sank into a deep lunge, the tiny nun would study me, plaintively wondering, "What am I doing wrong?"†   (source)
  • It can be a hearty or a plaintive tune, depending on your mood.†   (source)
  • And where, she asked in one especially plaintive letter, was that young "untitled" John Adams she had fallen in love with.†   (source)
  • Iggy's plaintive voice made me pull back.†   (source)
  • "Do you not see?" she said, and her voice was plaintive now "An end to this business is my mother's only chance for a new beginning.†   (source)
  • The plaintive melody, sung in low tones, spoke beyond its notes.†   (source)
  • "I don't understand," said the Mede plaintively.†   (source)
  • In the distance a single bird cries plaintively.†   (source)
  • Somewhere in the audience an old woman's voice began a plaintive wail; the birth of a sad, untormulated song that died stillborn in a sob.†   (source)
  • It's plaintive and familiar, a howl in the night for what one has lost and can't get back.†   (source)
  • "I said I did, Man," he answered plaintively.†   (source)
  • Their faces stare at her, plaintive, uncomplaining.†   (source)
  • It turned and ran to the bedroom door, scratching plaintively.†   (source)
  • Distant wolves howled, plaintive.†   (source)
  • "He'll die here; he has no mummy or daddy," I said plaintively.†   (source)
  • Breathing hard, Conklin paused and leveled his bloodshot eyes at Webb; he spoke in a plaintive whisper.†   (source)
  • "Why are you asking him about the stores?" she interrogated me in Korean, her tongue plaintive, edgy, as though she were in some pain.†   (source)
  • Her voice was plaintive.†   (source)
  • Which is my plaintive way of saying that I do worry about you and Franny when I get a chance, but not nearly so often as I'd like to.†   (source)
  • His eyes closed; his voice was plaintive.†   (source)
  • They didn't really give you a ring, did they, Bubba?" the Bear said plaintively in his rumbling basso profundo voice.†   (source)
  • Long-tailed magpies jeered among the cottonwoods in dry watercourses, and bull-bats boomed in the dusk and peeped plaintively as they winged the sky.†   (source)
  • "I think of nothing but," she said, and a little plaintive.†   (source)
  • For the next hour Daisy Mae cried plaintively into the darkling subarctic sides, but without raising a whisper of a reply.†   (source)
  • "Makes you feel hopeless, " she said plaintively.†   (source)
  • By contrast the voice of the female seemed plaintive, defensive, growing shrill at moments as if in fright but generally submissive with an undertone of pleading.†   (source)
  • MARTHA shifts HELEN'S doll in her clutch, and it plaintively says momma.†   (source)
  • "How is it?" said George plaintively, "that Jeff's always off somewhere when I happen to be home?†   (source)
  • The music rose plaintively.†   (source)
  • Then they stopped too, and she dozed, but woke to the thin plaintive voice of the mama-cat she had forgotten to feed.†   (source)
  • He was in the kitchen, checking over the refreshment-dials in preparation for the party, whistling a plaintive, crooked tune.†   (source)
  • "Just one child?" persisted Mary, her voice weak and plaintive.†   (source)
  • "I don't want no trouble," he said plaintively. "Don't let him sock me, George."   (source)
    plaintively = in a pleading manner (almost begging)
  • "But I thought he liked me," she said plaintively.†   (source)
  • He wrote a plaintive letter asking authorities to investigate him so his name could be cleared.†   (source)
  • Why won't you blow?" she whispered plaintively.†   (source)
  • He drew a plaintive chord from the woodharp.†   (source)
  • Princess Myrcella asked the queen plaintively.†   (source)
  • "I don't want to talk to you," she said, hating her plaintive tone.†   (source)
  • "Why do they call me Grace?" she asked in a plaintive voice.†   (source)
  • The baby squirmed in his arms and uttered a plaintive cry as he exited the tent.†   (source)
  • Gazzy asked plaintively, as we rattled and banged down the dark streets.†   (source)
  • Buford made a plaintive squeal, then clattered into the corner in a sulk.†   (source)
  • "I wish I could," Bran said plaintively.†   (source)
  • "Can you be both?" asked David plaintively.†   (source)
  • Elaine, which I once found too plaintive.†   (source)
  • She stroked his back, and Zeus whined plaintively before licking at her hands.†   (source)
  • "What kind of job are we talking about?" she asked plaintively.†   (source)
  • 'What about David?' she asked in a plaintive whisper.†   (source)
  • A plaintive voice came from behind me: "Eliezer, my son ...bring me ...a little coffee..."†   (source)
  • A jockey in the pack heard a deep, plaintive sound rise up over the shouts from the crowd.†   (source)
  • Mike said plaintively, "I do not understand.†   (source)
  • "Why, Captain, I don't want to leave," he said plaintively.†   (source)
  • Cullen said gloomily, plaintively, "He ought to go to sleep.†   (source)
  • The words came out plaintively, like those of a child on the verge of tears.†   (source)
  • Mama— MAMA: (Folding over) Strength ....BENEATHA (Plaintively) Mama ....MAMA Strength!†   (source)
  • "Milord," a plaintive voice called down from the forecastle of the merchanter.†   (source)
  • We don't need anything plaintive or alarming in our lives right now.†   (source)
  • Consadine's a poor provider," she said plaintively, alluding to her absent husband.†   (source)
  • 'But I did get to speak to him,' the chaplain argued in a plaintive tone of self-justification.†   (source)
  • Her voice was plaintive, which annoyed me.†   (source)
  • She shouted for minutes on end, but heard only plaintive echoes in response.†   (source)
  • He heard distant laughter, the plaintive sound of pipes.†   (source)
  • 'It's starting to hurt me,' Snowden cried out suddenly with a plaintive, urgent wince.†   (source)
  • After a moment he said, almost plaintively, "I've lost Dorsey Pender.†   (source)
  • "Wyoh," he said plaintively, "I did my best.†   (source)
  • (Almost plaintively) Why you always trying to give me something to eat†   (source)
  • 'I'm cold,' Snowden whimpered feebly over the intercom system then in a bleat of plaintive agony.†   (source)
  • 'I'm right here, Sergeant Knight,' Doc Daneeka told him plaintively.†   (source)
  • His voice was plaintive, immensely evocative, and profoundly sad.†   (source)
  • " Joe said plaintively, "But what will I do here alone?"†   (source)
  • As he walked he called plaintively: "Hey...Where is everybody?†   (source)
  • I did, however, detect a plaintive quality in it which made my sympathies go out to her.†   (source)
  • He called plaintively: "Where is everybody?†   (source)
  • He won't look at me, he looks down at the floor, where the cat is rubbing itself against his legs, mewing and mewing plaintively.†   (source)
  • There's a cloud of black smoke, and then a long plaintive wail, which follows him like a baffled phantom along the track.†   (source)
  • It was a lovely and windless evening, and the birds were twittering, and the trees in the orchard near the road were golden in the late sunlight, and the purple milkweed flowers that grew beside the drive smelled very sweetly; and also the last few peonies beside the verandah, and the climbing roses; and the coolness came down out of the air, while Jamie sat and played on his flute, so plaintively it did your heart good.†   (source)
  • With her ears, she took inventory of his doings: chair legs dragged across the floor, the plaintive squeak of the cane seat when he sat, the clinking of spoon against plate, the flutter of newspaper pages flipped, the slurping of water.†   (source)
  • "And Odo the hero, they bore him back home To the place that he'd known as a lad," sang Slughorn plaintively.†   (source)
  • He won't be there, says a soft voice in her head; a soft anguished voice, a plaintive cooing voice like a mourning dove's.†   (source)
  • The ephemeral bloom of a sego lily peeks from the toe of a ninety-foot stone arch, and canyon wrens call back and forth in plaintive tones from a thatch of scrub oak.†   (source)
  • Meg asked plaintively.†   (source)
  • His only other solace was running, slogging through the sand around the Kahuku runway, thinking of the 1944 Olympics, trying to forget Harry Brooks's plaintive face.†   (source)
  • "But why?" she cried plaintively.†   (source)
  • mith, a lifelong teetotaler who strongly disapproved of Pollard's drinking" probably waved off the jockey's plaintive wails for alcohol that morning.†   (source)
  • Ser Cleos asked plaintively.†   (source)
  • Simon sounded plaintive.†   (source)
  • Someone began to pound insistently against the door frame, and my name was shouted in a plaintive and alarming way.†   (source)
  • Leo couldn't understand the words, but the song was plaintive and bittersweet, as if she were describing a home she could never return to.†   (source)
  • Then they heard plaintive falsettos from the loudspeakers on the courthouse lawn and they walked down to the cars in the easy heat.†   (source)
  • It was almost plaintive.†   (source)
  • What, then, would she have thought when she unlocked the door to reveal a darkened living room lit only by the pale yellow glow of candles and the plaintive sound of Billie Holiday on the stereo?†   (source)
  • She sounded more plaintive than ever.†   (source)
  • A favorite Doktè Paul story in the village of Kay Epin was of the time, many years back, when Farmer had chased a man into a field of cane, calling to him plaintively to come out and let him treat him.†   (source)
  • One could have believed that its whiteness, smoothness, and expanse had at one time cried out rather plaintively for India ink and block lettering.†   (source)
  • Then somewhere in the procession an old, plaintive, masculine voice arose in a song, wavering, stumbling in the silence at first alone, until in the band a euphonium horn fumbled for the key and took up the air, one catching and rising above the other and the other pursuing, two black pigeons rising above a skull-white barn to tumble and rise through still, blue air.†   (source)
  • Another plaintive love song, she didn't recognize this one; though as she listened, she began to hear, beyond his voice, the delight of her family.†   (source)
  • 'Tis almost 14 years since we were united, but not more than half that time we had the happiness of living together," she wrote plaintively.†   (source)
  • With a whirl of wind, Saphira landed in the hollow by the base of the hill, startling a flock of nearby sheep, who scurried away while uttering plaintive bleats.†   (source)
  • He would never be able to forget Leona's pale, startled eyes, her sweet smile, her plaintive drawl, her thin, insatiable body.†   (source)
  • All summer long, anywhere there was a radio playing, you could hear the almost eerie, plaintive voice of Akon, a Senegalese rapper, singing about prison.†   (source)
  • We were embarrassed by the earthy harmonies they sang, but since the visitors were awed we dared not laugh at the crude, high, plaintively animal sounds Jim Trueblood made as he led the quartet.†   (source)
  • I wish't Johnnie was here," he repeated his plaintive formula, as he raised the handkerchief and untied the corners.†   (source)
  • And as if to emphasize the conflict between East and West, the jarring music would occasionally, startlingly, come to a stop, as the plaintive strains of a simple Chinese melody emerged from a single instrument, while the figures remained rigid under the swirling bombardment of the spotlights.†   (source)
  • Evening was coming on, the town's best hour, when the air changed from hot to balmy and the music from the radios in the rum shops and the horns of the tap-taps passing through town grew loud and bright and the general filth and poverty began to be obscured, the open sewers and the ragged clothing and the looks on the faces of malnourished children and the extended hands of elderly beggars plaintively saying, "Grangou," which means "hungry" in Creole.†   (source)
  • He calls long distance, his voice on the phone fading in and out like a wartime broadcast, plaintive with defeat, with an archaic sadness that seems, more and more, to be that of men in general.†   (source)
  • As it progressed, the melody grew ever more wild, and what had been plaintive became urgent, and the notes trilled up and down in a manner so fast, so insistent, so complicated, so alarming that Eragon began to fear for the safety of the musician.†   (source)
  • Dunbar asked plaintively from the floor, wincing at the vibrating pains in his temples that his voice set up.†   (source)
  • "Koo-werp?" he said plaintively.†   (source)
  • The station was near by, and they could heat the plaintive hooting of engines shunting in the distance.†   (source)
  • She said it then, although she tried to avoid any intensity, keeping the plaintive edge in her voice of one who has been unjustly abused.†   (source)
  • I designed my letter carefully, assuring myself that it was plaintive and rueful enough to pluck the heartstrings of every human residing on both sides of the Potomac.†   (source)
  • At some moment between three and four o'clock I hear a ship's whistle, plaintive and mournful and far off borne through the night from N.Y. harbor.†   (source)
  • Suddenly the stillness of the open country stretching into the distance outside the window was broken by a mournful, plaintive sound.†   (source)
  • There was something plaintive, childlike about her voice, which was light in timbre, almost fragile, breaking a little in the upper register and of a faint huskiness lower down.†   (source)
  • Wringing her hands and on the verge of tears, she begged him to sit down a moment and, throwing herself into a chair and getting up again, spoke incoherently, in a high-pitched plaintive singsong, stumbling over her words and repeatedly interjecting: "What do you think?"†   (source)
  • He stood in the doorway whistling a crooked, plaintive tune, watching the Jumper disappear into the steel-blue sky boring north toward Kingston Hospital.†   (source)
  • Now, now, whoa there, I'll show you how to butt," her mistress coaxed her in a whisper, but the cow crossly shook her head and craned her neck, mooing plaintively, and beyond the black barns of Meliuzeievo the stars twinkled, and invisible threads of sympathy stretched between them and the cow as if there were cattle sheds in other worlds where she was pitied.†   (source)
  • I don't know why I was at the same time so buoyed up and saddened by the lovely and plaintive sound of the Haydn concerto for cello, washing down soft on the summer evening when I approached the house.†   (source)
  • Yet she never heard the piece again, for like everything else, the Sinfonia Concertante and Mozart, and the plaintive sweet dialogue between violin and viola, and the flutes, the strings, the dark-throated horns were all blown away on the war's wind in a Poland so barren, so smothered with evil and destruction that the very notion of music was a ludicrous excrescence.†   (source)
  • Her muffled and restrained voice remarked plaintively: "You said you were happy just now."†   (source)
  • The elderly American lady's voice rose shrill and plaintive.†   (source)
  • He passed his hand across his eyes, he sighed, his voice became plaintive.†   (source)
  • The old man hiccupped twice and said plaintively: "There's a squall coming."†   (source)
  • They sang a song; the plaintive distant music haunted him.†   (source)
  • The scrawny kitten lingered, brushing itself against our legs, and meowing plaintively.†   (source)
  • He whistled monotonously but truly: something in minor, plaintive and negroid.†   (source)
  • Uncle Peter's voice came as from a far distance, plaintive, placating.†   (source)
  • There was an almost plaintive note in his anger.†   (source)
  • His voice trailed off in a plaintive whimper.†   (source)
  • When we sat down, he said plaintively: "I do think, Charles, you might talk to me.†   (source)
  • "Oh, Bigger," said Vera, tenderly and plaintively.†   (source)
  • The words awoke a plaintive echo in Bernard's mind.†   (source)
  • You're more like what you were at Malpais," he said, when Bernard had told him his plaintive story.†   (source)
  • The mockingbirds and the jays, engaged in their old feud for possession of the magnolia tree beneath her window, were bickering, the jays strident, acrimonious, the mockers sweet voiced and plaintive.†   (source)
  • And then, tired of this, he would take up a book; read for a time; and then say half plaintively, appealingly (for he did not like me to witness these outbursts) : "What are you doing this afternoon, Jinny ?"†   (source)
  • "Why should I want to cheat you, Mrs. Nolan?" he asked plaintively as he put the money away carefully.†   (source)
  • His moaney vas goodl" he said plaintively, lifting his hands and looking around with an expression of finality.†   (source)
  • Then the dog began to moan in old Salamano's room, and through the sleep-bound house the little plaintive sound rose slowly, like a flower growing out of the silence and the darkness.†   (source)
  • In his mind a new song had come, the Song of Evil, the music of the enemy, of any foe of the family, a savage, secret, dangerous melody, and underneath, the Song of the Family cried plaintively.†   (source)
  • Then he was stone-still" the white cat bounded past him and leaped upon the desk" it sat looking at him with large placid eyes and mewed plaintively.†   (source)
  • Through the undergrowth it goes with a plaintive sound, a musing sound; in it the unwinded cane and saplings lean as before a little gale, swaying without reflections as though suspended on invisible wires from the branches overhead.†   (source)
  • In my dressing-room everything breakable had been stowed away, the door to the cabin was hooked open, and my wife called plaintively from within.†   (source)
  • Mr Hardman was a small man, delicately plump, with exquisitely manicured hands and a plaintive tenor voice.†   (source)
  • And there would fall between them sometimes long rigid silences, when, in a state of mind which annoyed Lily in her, half plaintive, half resentful, she seemed unable to surmount the tempest calmly, or to laugh as they laughed, but in her weariness perhaps concealed something.†   (source)
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