Definition of "elegiac"

elegiac

/ˌɛləˈd͡ʒaɪək/

adjective
comparative more elegiac, superlative most elegiac
1. Of or relating to an elegy.
2. Expressing sorrow or mourning.
  Quotations
  Hast thou no elegiac verse / For Brunswick's venerable hearse, / What! not a line, a tear, a sigh, / When valour bleeds for liberty?
  1808 February 22, Walter Scott, “Introduction to Canto Third: To William Erskine, Esq.”, in Marmion; a Tale of Flodden Field, Edinburgh: […] J[ames] Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Company, […]; London: William Miller, and John Murray, stanza III, page 119
  And elegiac griefs, and songs of love,
  1856, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “First Book”, in Aurora Leigh, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1857, page 36
noun
plural elegiacs
1. A poem composed in the couplet style of classical elegies: a line of dactylic hexameter followed by a line of dactylic pentameter.
  Quotations
  His saphics are worse, if possible, than his elegiacs
  1748, John Upton, Critical Observations on Shakespeare‎, 2nd edition, page 385