dolorous
adjective
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The Painful History of Dolorous
If you’ve ever studied a Romance language, you’ve likely run into words related to Latin dolor, meaning "pain" or "grief." Indeed, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian all refer to pain using descendants of dolor. English (which despite its many Latinate terms is categorized as a Germanic language) has dolor to thank for dolorous. When the word first appeared, it was linked to physical pain; as the British surgeon John Banister wrote in 1578, "No medicine may prevail … till the same dolorous tooth be … plucked up by the roots." The "causing pain" sense of dolorous coexisted with the "sorrowful" sense for centuries, but (to the dolor, perhaps, of some) its use is now rare.
Synonyms
Examples of dolorous in a Sentence
Jessica Kiang, Variety, 8 July 2023
The next evening, a lanky youth in military fatigues mumbles something less dolorous from the same podium and Llewyn can only watch from the sidelines as the audience applauds with vigour.
—Hazlitt, 24 Aug. 2022
Things had changed just enough to incorporate this kind of hard, dolorous realism.
—Wesley Morris, New York Times, 5 Nov. 2020
Filled with desolate vistas, a feathered and furred menagerie, and multiple aperture-like windows, these fragments quickly establish a moody tone and over time become dolorous refrains.
—Manohla Dargis, New York Times, 1 Feb. 2018
His Grammy supremacy, to the exclusion of Sheeran, shows that the dolorous guitarist no longer holds intrinsic sway over the smiling showman for the awards' purposes.
—Andrew Unterberger, Billboard, 28 Nov. 2017
The mosaics portray Jesus and his human forebears, including Joseph and a dolorous Mother Mary.
—Nasser Nasser, National Geographic, 27 May 2016
Did Affleck use up his store of dolorous winces in Manchester by the Sea?
—Christian Lorentzen, New Republic, 5 July 2017
Dictionary Entries Near dolorous
Cite this Entry
“Dolorous.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dolorous. Accessed 30 Nov. 2024.
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dolorous
adjective
Medical Definition
dolorous
adjective
ˈdäl-ə-
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