The term is used to refer both to dirges in the Hebrew Bible, and also to later poems which are traditionally recited by Jews on Tisha B'Av.
In the Hebrew Bible, the term kinah or qinah refers to a dirge or lament, especially as sung by Jewish professional mourning women.
[3] On Tisha B'Av, Jews traditionally recite a series of elegiac poems, known as kinnot, after the evening and morning prayers.
These poems mourn the destruction of both the First and Second Temple in Jerusalem and other tragedies in Jewish history, including the Crusades, the Expulsion of Jews from Spain and the Holocaust.
The main impetus for creation of new kinnot during the Middle Ages was the Crusades, in which Christian mobs decimated many Jewish communities.
See also the Hebrew wikipedia page קינות לתשעה באב See קינות תשעה באב (Hebrew) Although the fast of Tisha B'Av was founded to mourn the destruction of the Temple, over the years other travails of the Jewish Diaspora have been added to its observance and memorialized in the kinnot.