mourner

Noun

mourner (plural mourners)

1. Someone filled with or expressing grief or sadness, especially over a death; someone who mourns.
   • Disuniter of all affection—awful seal to life's nothingness—warning and witness of power and judgment—Death has always enow of terror and sorrow, even when there are many to comfort the mourner, when the path has been smoothed for the sufferer, and life offers all its best and brightest to soothe...1830, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Juvenile Forget Me Not 1831, The Miniature, pages 37–45
   • I stood close to heartsick mourners and worried that I would not sustain the enormousness of their spiritual weight.2024 September 17, Lauren DePino, “I Sang at Hundreds of Funerals. This Is What I Learned About Grief.”, in The New York Times Magazine
2. A person attending a funeral or otherwise participating in rituals related to bereavement.
   • Looking out the door I see the rain / Fall upon the funeral mourners / Parading in a wake of sad relations / As their shoes fill up with water1995, “Lover, You Should've Come Over”, in Grace (Folk Pop), performed by Jeff Buckley, United States
3. In certain cultures, a person hired to participate in funerary rituals, sometimes by making a conspicuous and/or conventional show of grief; hired mourner.
4. Any of a number of suboscine birds in the related familes Tityridae and Tyrannidae.