plaint
/pleɪnt/noun
plaint is a noun meaning “A complaint” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled P-L-A-I-N-T, and it appears about once in every 19 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of plaint is plaints.
What does plaint mean?
noun
- 1
A complaint.
- 2
archaicA lament or woeful cry.
- 3
archaicA sad song.
- 4
UKarchaicAn accusation.
Once the plaint had been made there was nothing that could be done to revoke it.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce plaint?
- UK /pleɪnt/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Vealhurl-plaint.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of plaint
- plaints plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is plaint?
Plaint appears about once in every 19 million words in written English, the 131,834th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Where does plaint come from?
From Middle English plainte, borrowed from Anglo-Norman plainte (“lamentation”), plaint (“lament”), and Old French pleinte (“lamentation”), pleint (“lament”) (modern French plainte), from Medieval Latin plancta (“plaint”), from Latin planctus (“a beating of the breast in lamentation, beating, lamentation”), from Latin plango (“to beat one's breast, to lament”); see plain.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).