dolorous

• dolourous (obsolete)

Borrowed from Old French dolerous (modern French douloureux), from Late Latin dolōrōsus (“painful”), from Latin dolor. Doublet of dolorose.

• IPA^(key): /ˈdɒləɹəs/, /ˈdoʊləɹəs/

dolorous (comparative more dolorous, superlative most dolorous)

1. Solemnly or ponderously sad.
   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Book 5, Canto 4:

     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:

     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," Time:

     As World War II came to a close, the gaunt and dolorous child was liberated at yet another death camp, Buchenwald.