These words refer either to sincere or censorious disapproval or to an aggrieved or regretful feeling of loss. Deplore often suggests a feeling of righteous indignation. It refers to disapproval that is thoroughgoing and is called up by some affront to decency, taste, propriety or morality: to deplore a stateman’s vacillating policies; deploring the book’s bad writing; deploring the man’s boorish manners.

Bemoan and bewail are often used in tandem to suggest a deploring attitude that is over-solemn, hypocritical or censorious: bemoaning and bewailing their capture as though they were innocent victims. Both words once were used with serious intent but now they are mostly restricted to pejorative or satirical uses. While both words indicate a verbal display of sorrow or grief, bemoan might suggest a greater incoherence, one more nearly reduced to wordless sounds; bewail , by contrast, might suggest a self-indulgent rush of sanctimonious or hypocritical rhetoric. Often no distinction can be seen between the two in actual usage: bemoaning the effort he had to make to support his family; loudly bewailing her husband’s treatment of her to the neighbours.

Lament can also be used pejoratively or satirically, like bemoan and bewail ; it more specifically suggests, in this case, a hypocritical or self-pitying expression of bereavement or loss: lamenting the passing of the good old days. The word still has legitimate serious uses, however, to indicate sincere grief or remorse: lamenting the fact that it was her own lack of concern that had driven the boy from the house that night. Mourn has pejorative possibilities, but it is much more commonly used to refer to serious expression s of deep loss: a whole nation unashamedly mourning the loss of their leader.