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1 Definition
A state of great sorrow or anguish; deep grief or mental suffering.
2 In Use
The old letters were full of a quiet dolor, decades of longing folded into every line.
3 Word Origin
dolor Lat. · pain, grief → dolour O.Fr. · sorrow, grief → dolor Middle English
Dolor traces back to the Latin dolor, meaning pain or grief, itself connected to the verb dolere, to suffer or feel pain. The word passed through Old French as dolour, carrying the same weight of sorrow, before Middle English writers adopted it wholesale to describe emotional rather than purely physical suffering. Over centuries the spelling settled into dolor in American usage while dolour persisted in British English, though the meaning has stayed remarkably stable throughout its journey.
💡Fun Fact
Dolor has long lived a double life between everyday grief and high literary drama. John Milton reached for it in Paradise Lost to describe the anguish of the fallen angels, giving the word a grand, almost operatic weight it still carries today. Musicians know a close cousin in the Italian direction doloroso, meaning to play a passage sorrowfully, which shares the same Latin root. The word also survives quietly in dolorous, the adjective form still used to describe anything soaked in sadness, from a mournful melody to a gray, rain-streaked afternoon.
