mournful
The waves of mournfulness washed over me.
The music conjures up a mournfulness and strange serenity.
The songs alternate nicely between bouncy good cheer and romantic mournfulness.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Sadness and regret
aw
be/weigh on your conscienceidiom
bitter
black dog
breastbeating
cry
doom and gloom
feel badidiom
gloominess
glumness
groan
guilt
melancholia
prick someone's conscienceidiom
regretful
regretfully
remorse
remorseful
repentant
wretchedness

You can also find related words, phrases, and synonyms in the topics:

Remembering people who have died

Examples of mournfulness

mournfulness
This letter also made my grief vent itself in tears; they were not tears of remorse, however, but of an unavoidable mournfulness.
From Project Gutenberg
And mingled with this, thus making it all the more inexplicable, was a feeling of mournfulness, of pity.
From Project Gutenberg
She seemed to acquiesce, but the acquiescence was followed by moods of mournfulness and even by tears.
From Project Gutenberg
Taken in connection with the words she had just written, that mournfulness threatened her composure.
From Project Gutenberg
One of the captains threatened to flog a woman, because the mournfulness of her song was too painful to him.
From Project Gutenberg
He is trying to make out and take in the destruction of all this corner of the earth, and the mournfulness of it.
From Project Gutenberg
Her husband saw her as she spoke, and he was so struck by the mournfulness of her face that he came quietly over.
From Project Gutenberg
But soon the mood passed from her; her old, sweet mournfulness returned; again the clear unfathomableness was in her mystic eye.
From Project Gutenberg
Often one of the trio would eye it with furtive mournfulness, looking away again directly without a glance at the others.
From Project Gutenberg
It was like sunlight on a sad white day of mist; it did not dispel mournfulness, it seemed only to irradiate it.
From Project Gutenberg
My soul fondly dwelt upon the images of my brother and his children; yet they only increased the mournfulness of my contemplations.
From Project Gutenberg
She sought excitement, passion, and after that the mournfulness which comes when passion dies.
From Project Gutenberg
He sipped the sparkling water with suggestive mournfulness.
From Project Gutenberg
Instantly the room was populous with sounds of melodiousness, and mournfulness, and wonderfulness; the room swarmed with the unintelligible but delicious sounds.
From Project Gutenberg
I cannot describe the mournfulness of the tone.
From Project Gutenberg
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.