MOURNER

Pronunciation (US):

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does mourner mean? 

• MOURNER (noun)
  The noun MOURNER has 1 sense:

1. a person who is feeling grief (as grieving over someone who has died)

  Familiarity information: MOURNER used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• MOURNER (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A person who is feeling grief (as grieving over someone who has died)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

griever; lamenter; mourner; sorrower

Hypernyms ("mourner" is a kind of...):

unfortunate; unfortunate person (a person who suffers misfortune)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "mourner"):

bearer; pallbearer (one of the mourners carrying the coffin at a funeral)

wailer (a mourner who utters long loud high-pitched cries)

weeper (a hired mourner)

Derivation:

mourn (feel sadness)

mourn (observe the customs of mourning after the death of a loved one)

 Context examples 

As there are no relations at all, Jonathan will have to be chief mourner.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

I shall have many fellow-mourners for the ball, if not for Frank Churchill; but Mr. Knightley will be happy.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

"Then White Fang, to show his friendship, will have to be chief mourner at the funeral," laughed the master.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

He felt that his blighted affections were quite dead now, and though he should never cease to be a faithful mourner, there was no occasion to wear his weeds ostentatiously.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

The spirits of the departed seemed to flit around and to cast a shadow, which was felt but not seen, around the head of the mourner.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

No, said Anne, that I can easily believe to be impossible; but in time, perhaps—we know what time does in every case of affliction, and you must remember, Captain Harville, that your friend may yet be called a young mourner—only last summer, I understand.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

Then a stone, who saw what had happened, came up and kindly offered to help poor Chanticleer by laying himself across the stream; and this time he got safely to the other side with the hearse, and managed to get Partlet out of it; but the fox and the other mourners, who were sitting behind, were too heavy, and fell back into the water and were all carried away by the stream and drowned.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

The funeral held at noon was all completed, and the last stragglers of the mourners had taken themselves lazily away, when, looking carefully from behind a clump of alder-trees, we saw the sexton lock the gate after him.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

Pere la Chaise is very curious, for many of the tombs are like small rooms, and looking in, one sees a table, with images or pictures of the dead, and chairs for the mourners to sit in when they come to lament.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)