dolour
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈdɒlə/
ipa: /ˈdəʊlə/
ipa: /ˈdoʊlɚ/
homophone: dollar (some accents)
rhymes: -ɒlə(ɹ)
rhymes: -əʊlə(ɹ)
Forms: form: dolours
form: dolor
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.
Senses: examples: text: Who dyes the vtmoſt dolor doth abye, / But who that liues, is lefte to waile his loſſe: / So life is loſſe, and death felicity.
ref: 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto IV”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 38, page 455:
text: But for all this thou ſhalt haue as many Dolors for thy Daughters, as thou canſt tell in a yeare.
ref: 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:
text: 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.
ref: 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:
text: 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.
ref: 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:
text: [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; […]
ref: 1692, John Bunyan, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners: […], 7th edition, London: […] Robert Ponder, […], →OCLC, paragraph 164, page 78:
text: [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!
ref: 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:
text: 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?
ref: 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:
synonyms: infelicity
joylessness
sadness
unhappiness
unjoy
antonyms: elation
felicity
happiness
joy
glosses: Anguish, grief, misery, or sorrow.
examples: text: 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 […]
ref: 1986, Rosemarie Tong, Ethics in Policy Analysis (Occupational Ethics Series), Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, →ISBN, page 16:
topics: economics
ethics
human-sciences
philosophy
sciences
synonyms: dol
antonyms: hedon
util
utile
utilon
glosses: In economics and utilitarianism: a unit of pain used to theoretically weigh people's outcomes.
Related terms: word: dol
word: dole
word: doloriferous
word: dolorific
word: dolorimeter
word: doloroso
word: dolorous
word: dolorously
word: dolorousness
word: endolour
word: undolorous
word: pain