mournival

noun /ˈmɔː.nɪ.vəl/

1. In the game of gleek, and other card games, a set of four cards of the same face value.

   obsolete

   Before George, there's not enough to rig out a Mournival of VVhores: they'l think me grown a meer Curmudgeon. Mercy on me, how will this glorious Trade be carri'd on, with ſuch a miſerable Stock!

2. A set of four people or things; a quartet.

   archaic, rare

   It was, as we shall have occasion to emphasize, not an accidental circumstance that the terror-novel was in the fullest flush of popularity during the seventeen-nineties, and it was also in this decade that Mrs. Radcliffe wrote and published her most characteristic works, A Sicilian Romance, 1790; The Romance of the Forest, 1791; The Mysteries of Udolpho, 1794; and The Italian, or, The Confessional of the Black Penitents, 1797, a mournival of Gothic masterpieces.

Where it comes from

Perhaps from French mornifle (“a card game”).

Adapted from the Wiktionary entry mournival (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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