dolour

English

WOTD – 15 April 2022

Etymology

From Middle English dolour (“physical pain, agony, suffering; painful disease; anguish, grief, misery, sorrow; grieving for sins, contrition; hardship, misery, trouble; cause of grief or suffering, affliction”) [and other forms], from Anglo-Norman dolour, Old French dolour, dolor, dulur (“pain”) (modern French douleur (“pain; distress”)), from Latin dolor (“ache, hurt, pain; anguish, grief, sorrow; anger, indignation, resentment”), from doleō (“to hurt, suffer physical pain; to deplore, grieve, lament”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *delh₁- (“to divide, split”)) + -or (suffix forming third-declension masculine abstract nouns). The English word is a doublet of dol.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈdɒlə/, /ˈdəʊlə/

• Audio (Southern England):

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  Audio:

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• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈdoʊlɚ/

• Audio (General American):

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• Homophone: dollar (some accents)
• Rhymes: -ɒlə(ɹ), -əʊlə(ɹ)
• Hyphenation: dol‧our

Noun

dolour (countable and uncountable, plural dolours) (British spelling)

1. (chiefly uncountable, literary) Anguish, grief, misery, or sorrow.

   Synonyms: infelicity, joylessness, sadness, unhappiness, unjoy

   Antonyms: elation, felicity, happiness, joy

   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto IV”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 38, page 455:

     Who dyes the vtmoſt dolor doth abye, / But who that liues, is lefte to waile his loſſe: / So life is loſſe, and death felicity.

   • c. 1603–1606, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of King Lear”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene iv], page 293, column 2:

     But for all this thou ſhalt haue as many Dolors for thy Daughters, as thou canſt tell in a yeare.

   • 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene i], page 6, column 2:

     Gon[zalo]. When euery greefe is entertaind, / That's offer'd comes to th'entertainer. / Seb[astian]. A dollor. / Gon. Dolour comes to him indeed, you haue ſpoken truer then you purpos'd / Seb. You haue taken it wiſelier then I meant you ſhould.

   • 1611, Iohn Speed [i.e., John Speed], “Marie Queene of England, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, &c. The Sixtieth Monarch of the English, Her Raigne, Mariage, Acts, and Death.”, in The History of Great Britaine under the Conquests of yͤ Romans, Saxons, Danes and Normans. […], London: […] William Hall and John Beale, for John Sudbury and George Humble, […], →OCLC, book IX ([Englands Monarchs] […]), paragraph 32, page 819, column 1:

     This Duke (ſaith [Richard] Grafton) being an aged man, and fortunate before in all his vvarres, vpon this diſtaſture impreſſed ſuch dolour of mind, that for verie griefe thereof he liued not long after.

   • 1692, John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners: […], 7th edition, London: […] Robert Ponder, […], →OCLC, paragraph 164, page 78:

     [E]very ſentence of that Book, every groan of that Man [Francesco Spiera], with all the reſt of his actions in his dolours, […] was as knives and daggers in my Soul; […]

   • 1815 February 24, [Walter Scott], chapter XV, in Guy Mannering; or, The Astrologer. […], volume I, Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; and Archibald Constable and Co., […], →OCLC, page 240:

     [T]o think that I am going to leave her—and to leave her in distress and dolour—No, Miss Lucy, you need never think it!

   • 1870–1874, James Thomson, “The City of Dreadful Night”, in The City of Dreadful Night and Other Poems, London: Reeves and Turner, […], published 1880, →OCLC, part X, stanza 2, pages 25–26:

     Perchance a congregation to fulfil / Solemnities of silence in this doom, / Mysterious rites of dolour and despair / Permitting not a breath or chant of prayer?

2. (countable, economics, ethics) In economics and utilitarianism: a unit of pain used to theoretically weigh people's outcomes.

   Synonym: dol

   Antonyms: hedon, util, utile, utilon

   • 1986, Rosemarie Tong, Ethics in Policy Analysis (Occupational Ethics Series), Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, →ISBN, page 16:

     Supposedly, utilitarians are able to add and subtract hedons (units of pleasure) and dolors (units of pain) without any signs of cognitive or affective distress […]

Alternative forms

• dolor (American spelling)

Related terms

• dol
• dole
• doloriferous (obsolete)
• dolorific (archaic)
• dolorimeter
• doloroso
• dolorous
• dolorously
• dolorousness
• endolour
• undolorous

 

Translations

anguish, grief, misery, or sorrow — see also sorrow

• Bulgarian: печал (bg) (pečal), скръб (bg) (skrǎb)
• Catalan: dolor (ca)
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 悲哀 (zh) (bēi'āi), 傷心／伤心 (zh) (shāngxīn)

• Danish: smerte (da)
• Dutch: smart (nl) f
• French: douleur (fr) f, deuil (fr) m
• Galician: dor (gl) f
• German: Schmerz (de) m
• Hungarian: bú (hu)
• Irish: ong, dólás m
• Italian: dolore (it) m
• Japanese: 悲哀 (ja) (ひあい, hiai)
• Latin: dolor (la)
• Polish: boleść (pl) f, rozpacz (pl) f, żal (pl) m
• Russian: го́ре (ru) n (góre), гру́сть (ru) f (grústʹ), печа́ль (ru) f (pečálʹ), ско́рбь (ru) f (skórbʹ), тоска́ (ru) f (toská)
• Spanish: dolor (es)

in economics and utilitarianism: unit of pain used to theoretically weigh people’s outcomes

Further reading

• sorrow (emotion) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Old French

Noun

dolour oblique singular, f (oblique plural dolours, nominative singular dolour, nominative plural dolours)

1. Late Anglo-Norman spelling of dulur

   qi purroit penser ou ymaginer la dolour et les peynes qe vous, ma douz Dame, endurastes.

   Who could think of or imagine the pain and the suffering that you, my dear lady, have endured.