Unlachrymose

Pronunciation

• RP enPR: É™nlăkʹrÄ­mōs, IPA: /É™nˈlækɹɪməʊs/

Origin

- + lachrymose

Full definition of unlachrymose

Adjective

1. Not lachrymose.
1. Free from dejection and melancholy; not vexed or weighed down by circumstances.
• 1852: The New Monthly Magazine, volume 95, page 324The only articulate sounds that could be distinguished, were the impatient exclamations of hungry soldiers, clamouring for their schnapps and suppers, and throwing the toiling sutlers into a frenzy of bewilderment. The spectacle, too, was of an equally joyous and unlachrymose description.
2. Tearless; not given to crying.
• 1853: Notes and Queries, volume 7, page 97When the devil was going out of the possessed person, he was supposed to do so with reluctance: “The spirit cried, and rent him sore, and came out of him: and he was as one dead; insomuch that many said, He is dead.” (St. Mark, ix. 26.) The tears and struggles of the infant would therefore be a convincing proof that the Evil One had departed. In Ireland (as every clergyman knows) nurses will decide the matter by pinching the baby, rather than allow him to remain silent and unlachrymose.
• 1944: Franklin Pierce Adams, Nods and Becks, page 126 (Whittlesey House)And as to the slumber of infants, it is no guess of mine that to sleep like a baby is not always to lie quiet and unlachrymose all night.
3. Unsentimental.
1. Unamenable to appeals of emotion.
• 1975: The Spectator, volume 235, part 2, page 13 (F.C. Westley)But the really dangerous people would be the servants, la valetaille et la piétaille, the cold-eyed, unimpressionable, unlachrymose, and, when encountered in a corridor, insolent observers of Rousseau’s magisterial performances.
2. Not schmaltzy; expressed without gratuitous sorrow.
• 1983: Jean Pierre Coursodon et alii, American Directors, volume 1, page 112 (McGraw-Hill; ISBN 0070132615, 9780070132610)His films with Temple are surprisingly light and unlachrymose.
• 1984: Alan Blyth and Malcolm Walker eds., Opera on Record, volume 2, page 126 (Hutchinson)Ezio Pinza (DB 828; GEMM 162/3), recorded in 1924, offers unlachrymose singing of the lovely aria ‘Cinta di fiori’.
• 1989: Gareth Reeves, T.S. Eliot: A Virgilian Poet, page 156 (Macmillan; ISBN 033344390X, 9780333443903)For instance, there is the sparely stated consolation of the poem’s concluding paragraph, or the sinewy articulation of the lines in ‘The Dry Salvages’ I distinguishing the sea’s ‘different voices’, and culminating in unlachrymose sympathy for the ‘anxious worried women’: an effect achieved by the way in which their anxiety is syntactically submerged, and thereby enhanced, in the unwinding sentence delineating time’s relentlessness.
• 1990: Joel Flegler, Fanfare, volume 13, issues 5–6, page 368 (sub nomine sui)The off-handed elegance and freedom of Dino Borgioli’s Duke make him seem utterly charming and irresistible. His use of legato and the sweetness he can call upon are worthy of an unlachrymose Gigli.
4. Unmournful; free from lamentation.
• 1998: Leon Wieseltier, Kaddish, page 54 (Knopf; ISBN 0375403892, 9780375403897)I conclude that the kaddish, in Rashi’s day, played only its traditional role, in and out of the context of mourning. It was still a liturgical corollary to a pedagogical activity. Indeed, in Rashi’s reading, the liturgy of mourning that the kaddish accompanied was itself not construed as an expression of mourning, even if it was expressed by mourners. “Neither a lament nor a dirge”: this seems odd. In this unlachrymose interpretation of the prayer of justification, Rashi seems to have divorced language from reality. Of course these words are a lament and a dirge! Just see where they are said.