mournival
Appearance
English
[edit]Alternative forms
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Perhaps from French mornifle (“a card game”).
Pronunciation
[edit]- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ˈmɔː.nɪ.vəl// invalid IPA characters (/)
- (General American) IPA(key): /ˈmɔɹ.nɪ.vəl/
Noun
[edit]mournival (plural mournivals)
- (card games, obsolete) In the game of gleek, and other card games, a set of four cards of the same face value.
- 1677 (date written), John Dryden, The Kind Keeper; or, Mr. Limberham: A Comedy: […], London: […] R[ichard] Bentley, and M[ary] Magnes, […], published 1680, →OCLC, Act IV, scene i, page 37:
- Before George, there's not enough to rig out a Mournival of VVhores: they'l think me grown a meer Curmudgeon. Mercy on me, how will this glorious Trade be carri'd on, with ſuch a miſerable Stock!
- (by extension, archaic, rare) A set of four people or things; a quartet.
- 1964 [1938], Montague Summers, “The Romantic Feeling” (chapter I), in The Gothic Quest, Russell & Russell, page 56:
- It was, as we shall have occasion to emphasize, not an accidental circumstance that the terror-novel was in the fullest flush of popularity during the seventeen-nineties, and it was also in this decade that Mrs. Radcliffe wrote and published her most characteristic works, A Sicilian Romance, 1790; The Romance of the Forest, 1791; The Mysteries of Udolpho, 1794; and The Italian, or, The Confessional of the Black Penitents, 1797, a mournival of Gothic masterpieces.
- 1958, Phyllis Bentley, “Isabella, Isabella”, in Love and Money: Seven Tales of the West Riding, New York: MacMillan Publishers, section 10, page 81:
- “ […] And there are those two girls to provide for. Isabella, Isabella—I always think of them as half a mournival of Isabellas—but what the deuce are their other names?”
“Isabella Lees and Isabella Brownwood,” said Thomas.
- 2005 May 27, Penelope Periwinkle, “Obsolete”, in soc.singles.moderated[1] (Usenet):
- Four plumbers came by a little while ago, looked at the leaks, and left to go to lunch. I guess, lacking a penis, that I'm not qualified to note that, yes indeedy, there is a leak from the ceiling in the lab. Or, perhaps, they it[sic] would take a mournival of manly men to keep lil' ole' me from panicking. They milled around in the hall for a minute, told me they's be back, and left.
- 2010, Aurelius Rex, “The History and Legacy of Dorn’s Betrayal”, in Aurelius Rex, editor, The Dornian Heresy, number 1, page 6, column 2:
- The Emperor, flanked by his Custodes, and Horus along with his Mournival of captains teleported onto the ship, but were scattered across the vast command decks by sinister magicks.
References
[edit]- “mournival”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.