mourning ring
- noun
- Archaic
:
anillo de luto
- After his father's death, he chose a simple mourning ring to signify his love and remembrance.
Examples
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She wore a beautiful mourning ring to remember her late grandmother, adorned with a small lock of hair.
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Necklaces showing mourning rings, carvings of the cross inscribed using the deceased's times of birth and passing away, and additionally bracelets or even lockets that contain locks of hair are a few of the items provided as memorial jewelry years ago.
Blog text (13) -
The mourning ring was inscribed with the initials of the deceased, serving as a heartfelt tribute.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a ring worn to commemorate a deceased person' is directly and predictably derived from combining 'mourning' (grief after a death) with 'ring' (a decorative band). This straightforward noun+noun composition follows normal English compounding and is cross-linguistically plausible, so a B1 learner who knows both words would readily infer the MWE's meaning.
Etymology
Mourning ring comes from an old custom: people kept a lock of a dead loved one's hair inside a ring or had the ring marked with the person's initials so they could carry a small piece of them while they were 'mourning'. That's why a mourning ring means 'a ring worn to remember and honor a dead person'.
