Today’s Words That Work: Jeremiad

A jeremiad (jer-uh-MY-ud) — an allusion to the prophet Jeremiah — is a prolonged lamentation or mournful complaint, usually about the state of society and its morals.

Example (as used by Alex Green today): “Twenty-five years ago, Neil Postman warned of our consuming love affair with television in Amusing Ourselves to Death. In the book — a jeremiad about the danger of turning serious conversations about politics, business, religion, and science into entertainment packages — he argues that TV is creating not the dystopia of George Orwell’s 1984 but rather of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.”