jeremiad \jair-uh-MY-uhd\, noun:
A tale of sorrow, disappointment, or complaint; a doleful story; also, a dolorous or angry tirade.
This age in which leisure and letters were gilded with commerce did not see the decline and fall of art, despite the jeremiads of such artists as William Blake ('Where any view of money exists,' he prophesied, 'art cannot be carried on').-- Roy Porter, English Society in the Eighteenth Century
Johnson's jeremiad against what he sees as American imperialism and militarism exhaustively catalogs decades of U.S. military misdeeds-- Stan Crock, review of The Sorrows of Empire by Chalmers Johnson, Business Week, February 2, 2004
Economics ministers in general were taken aback when a recent World Bank report -- after a year of jeremiads -- suggested the crisis was being exaggerated-- Lance Castle, "The economic crisis revisited", Jakarta Post, April 1, 1999
Pronunciation: [je-rê-'mI-æd]
Definition: An extended lamentation; a long, drawn-out complaining tirade, often accompanied by a prophecy or insinuation of imminent doom.
Usage: One could write a jeremiad about this word itself, a poor lexical orphan without siblings or off-spring and whose parents lie far away in the Middle East (see Etymology). However, the etymology will prove its lineage heavenly and no cause for lament.
Suggested Usage: Today's Biblical word works even in a commoner's home: "Every time I ask you to clean the garage all I hear is a jeremiad on how much easier your sister's lot is than yours!" However, the word tends to be more at home in conversations on loftier topics: "I grow a bit weary of the jeremiads against progress and modernity that pervade contemporary European and American literature."
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