Words / D / General

dirge

noun/dɜːdʒ/

B2CEFR level
58/100Rarity: uncommon
LiteraryRegister

A slow, mournful piece of music, typically for a funeral.

The pipers played a slow dirge as the procession wound through the streets.

Similar: threnody, requiem

Origin: From Latin dirige, first word of a Latin funeral antiphon.

Topic: funeral song in General English

Rarity runs from 0 (a word everyone knows) to 100 (almost never seen outside specialist or literary writing). Level is the word's real difficulty on the CEFR scale, from A1 to C2.

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