dolorous
English edit
Alternative forms edit
- dolourous (obsolete)
Etymology edit
From Middle English dolorous, from Old French dolerous (modern French douloureux), from Late Latin dolōrōsus (“painful”), from Latin dolor. Doublet of dolorose.
Pronunciation edit
Adjective edit
dolorous (comparative more dolorous, superlative most dolorous)
- Solemnly or ponderously sad.
- 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book V, Canto IV”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:
- Through dolorous despaire, which she conceyved,
Into the Sea her selfe did headlong throw,
Thinking to have her griefe by death bereaved.
- 1645, John Milton, On the Morning of Christ's Nativity, stanza 14:
- . . . Hell itself will pass away,
And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day.
- 1859, Charles Dickens, chapter 30, in A Tale of Two Cities:
- From this prison here of horror, whence I every hour tend nearer and nearer to destruction, I send you . . . the assurance of my dolorous and unhappy service.
- 1922, Michael Arlen, “3/2/1”, in “Piracy”: A Romantic Chronicle of These Days[1]:
- She turned and waved a hand to him, she cried a word, but he didn't hear it, it was a lost word. A sable wraith she was in the parkland, fading away into the dolorous crypt of winter.
- 2001 June 24, Stefan Kanfer, “Author, Teacher, Witness”, in Time:
- As World War II came to a close, the gaunt and dolorous child was liberated at yet another death camp, Buchenwald.
Translations edit
solemnly or ponderously sad
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