plaintively

1. 1.

   in a plaintive manner

   “the last note of the song rang out plaintively”

Questions about plaintively

What does plaintively mean?

plaintively means "in a plaintive manner".

How many syllables are in plaintively?

plaintively has 3 syllables: plain-tive-ly. The stress falls on "plain". In IPA it is /ˈpleɪnˌtaɪvli/.

Is plaintively a common word?

plaintively is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.