Today's words

threnody \THREN-uh-dee\ - a song of lamentation for the dead : elegy

I recognized this definition when I saw it, but couldn't recall it just by seeing the word. I think it was within the past month or so that I first encountered it, perhaps somewhere where it was identified as a synonym of "elegy."

That last word always reminds me of the hilariously awful story in which I first saw it, which I hope isn't true: 

A musician of more ambition than talent composed an elegy at the death of composer Edward MacDowell.  She played the elegy for the pianist Josef Hofmann, then asked his opinion.

"Well, it's quite nice," he replied, "but don't you think it would be better if . . ."

"If what?" asked the composer.

"If . . . if you had died and MacDowell had written the elegy?"

A small positive from this story: I have now learned a little of whom both MacDowell and Hofmann were. The latter's life story is another of many that warn of the dangers of addiction; alcohol was his poison.

Then there was this word from today's Dictionary Devil that I also remembered after the fact from a post when it was the WOTD . . .

²imperial noun \im-ˈpir-ē-əl\  3. [French impériale; from the beard worn by Napoléon III] :  a pointed beard growing below the lower lip

. . . not to mention this more-obscure definition of this well-known word, which I must have recognized from somewhere, as it was one of the first definitions that I matched up in the puzzle.