Mournival
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 In the game of gleek, and other card games, a set of four cards of the same face value. obsolete
"Before George, there's not enough to rig out a Mournival of VVhores: they'l think me grown a meer Curmudgeon. Mercy on me, how will this glorious Trade be carri'd on, with ſuch a miſerable Stock!"
- 2 A set of four people or things; a quartet. archaic, broadly, rare
"It was, as we shall have occasion to emphasize, not an accidental circumstance that the terror-novel was in the fullest flush of popularity during the seventeen-nineties, and it was also in this decade that Mrs. Radcliffe wrote and published her most characteristic works, A Sicilian Romance, 1790; The Romance of the Forest, 1791; The Mysteries of Udolpho, 1794; and The Italian, or, The Confessional of the Black Penitents, 1797, a mournival of Gothic masterpieces."
Example
More examples"Before George, there's not enough to rig out a Mournival of VVhores: they'l think me grown a meer Curmudgeon. Mercy on me, how will this glorious Trade be carri'd on, with ſuch a miſerable Stock!"
Etymology
Perhaps from French mornifle (“a card game”).
More for "mournival"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.