mourning band
- noun
- /ˈmɔrnɪŋ bænd/
:
banda de luto
- The athlete honored his late coach by wearing a mourning band during the championship game.
Examples
-
Albie wore his mourning band, and lost weight, and stopped telling his jokes and began to look older than his 70 years.
-
A black mourning band on the left sleeve was how Arkady recognized him.
Fiction book (1992) -
Some of the pictures had a mourning band across their right-hand corners.
Fiction book (1990) -
The captain wore a black mourning band on his uniform to honor the fallen soldiers.
-
At the memorial service, everyone placed a mourning band on their arm to remember the deceased.
Synonyms
13
3.5
A band worn on the upper arm to show group membership, rank, or mourning
11
9.9
A black band worn on the arm or hat to show mourning
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional: 'mourning' (grief after a death) + 'band' (a loop or strip) clearly yields a strip worn to signify mourning, so a learner who knows both words can infer its function and typical form. This construction is cross-linguistically common (e.g., black armband) and follows ordinary English noun-noun composition, making it immediately understandable at B1.
Etymology
Mourning band comes from a simple image: people wore a black band on the arm, hat, or uniform when they were 'mourning' someone who died. Because it was a clear sign of grief and respect, a mourning band still means a black band worn to 'show respect' for someone who has died.