TRAGEDY • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Tragedy

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/trˈædʒədi/ Listen

noun

Tragedy n. (pl. tragedies)

A dramatic poem, composed in elevated style, representing a signal action performed by some person or persons, and having a fatal issue; that species of drama which represents the sad or terrible phases of character and life. "Tragedy is to say a certain storie, As olde bookes maken us memorie, Of him that stood in great prosperitee And is yfallen out of high degree Into misery and endeth wretchedly." "All our tragedies are of kings and princes." "tragedy is poetry in its deepest earnest; comedy is poetry in unlimited jest."

A fatal and mournful event; any event in which human lives are lost by human violence, more especially by unauthorized violence.

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Etymology of 'Tragedy'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Tragedy" Quotes from Famous Books

... Saladin, or like the French of the revolutionary wars making the Pope Pius of those days answerable for the wrongs of Vercingetorix. The thing sounds like comedy, almost like conscious comedy. But it is a kind of comedy which may become tragedy, if the idea from which it springs get so deeply rooted in men's minds as to lead to any practical consequences. As long as talk of this kind does not get beyond the world of hot-headed students, it may pass for a craze. It would be ...

— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph

... birth carry a sort of canopy over you as you hoed. And there might be a person at each end of the row with some cool and refreshing drink. Agriculture is still in a very barbarous stage. I hope to live yet to see the day when I can do my gardening, as tragedy is done, to slow and soothing music, and attended by some of the comforts I have named. These things come so forcibly into my mind sometimes as I work, that perhaps, when a wandering breeze lifts my straw hat or a bird lights on a near currant-bush and shakes out a full-throated summer song, ...

— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various

... true in its proportions, than when she had been a girl. Her hair, trained into smooth obedience, was fastened within the muslin cap she had fashioned for herself, tied Quaker fashion under her chin. Her face was very white, as if, having blanched with terror in the tragedy of Haun's Mill, the life-blood had not as yet returned ...

— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall

... and with a check apron over her patched gown. The sailor boy, who was her sole earthly stay, was washed overboard in a late tempest. This couple from the palace and the almshouse are but the types of thousands more who represent the dark tragedy of life and seldom quarrel for the upper parts. Grief is such a leveller, with its own dignity and its own humility, that the noble and the peasant, the beggar and the monarch, will waive their pretensions to external rank without the officiousness ...

— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... power. Hence, there are good landscape and portrait painters among women, but as long as women have painted there has not been any great woman-painter of history. They make poems, romances, and sonnets, but not one of them has written a good tragedy.'' This expression shows that the imaginative power of woman is really more reproductive than productive, and it may be so observed in crimes and in the testimony ...

— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

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