elegist

[ el-i-jist ]

noun

1. the author of an elegy.

Word History and Origins

Origin of elegist¹

First recorded in 1765–75; eleg(y) + -ist

Example Sentences

These novelists are, at their hearts, elegists for time gone by.

From Washington Post

Has Kissinger, sly and witty, revived the tale as a wink toward his elegists?

From New York Times

One of the few who came to Mr. Adams’s defense was the writer Jeremiah Moss, New York City’s career elegist, who embraced the suggestion that the wrong people ought to leave.

From New York Times

Baker, like Yeats, was an elegist even before he’d suffered much loss.

From The New Yorker

Cohen, a member of the generation that had “grown up with books,” as he tells us, “only to exchange them for millennial adulthood and screens,” is a young elegist for an old idea: ideas.

From New York Times