deplore

Etymology

It is borrowed from Middle French deplorer,^[2][3] or directly borrowed from Latin dēplōrō (“to weep bitterly, bewail, give up as lost”).^[2][3][4][5] The OED, which says only that the word is ultimately Latin, and the other Oxford dictionaries also allow a route through Italian deplorare.^[4][6][7][8] The French verb is recorded from the 13th century,^[9] with the Old French forms desplorer and deplourer,^[4] and the Anglo-Norman verb, meaning to weep for, from the 12th century.^[10] The Latin compound is made of dē- (“entirely, away”) and plōrō (“to weep, cry out, wail”).^[2][9][7] De Vaan finds no etymology for the simple verb,^[11] and Etymonline calls it of unknown origin,^[9] while Klein and Partridge take it as imitative,^[12][13] and Barnhart, Merriam-Webster Unabridged and Dictionary.com as perhaps or probably so.^[2][3][5] The same Latin verb gave implore and explore.^[14][13]

Earliest recorded meaning

To give up as hopeless, to despair of: 1559, in a letter from Q. Kennedy to Willock.^[4][2] Etymonline dates this sense, now obsolete, to the 1550s.^[9]

Semantic evolution

The Latin verb already held both the weeping and the giving up for lost.^[4][9] English recorded the second first, but it lasted only until 1710,^[4] while the sense of bewailing or grieving over something, recorded from 1567,^[4][2] became the main one.^[4] In the early 17th century the verb could also mean to tell with grief, in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, or even to shed like tears (1601);^[4] from 1632 it was used without an object for "to mourn", now rare or obsolete.^[4] Johnson (1755) defined it only as to lament or bewail, quoting Dryden's Aeneid.^[15] The feeling then weakened: by the mid-19th century to deplore something could mean simply to disapprove of it strongly,^[16] which the OED first records from 1851, in Melville's Moby-Dick, and calls the usual modern sense.^[4]

Timeline

• 1559 – to give up as hopeless (obsolete by 1710).^[4][2]
• 1567 – to weep for, to regret deeply.^[4][2][9]
• 1601 – to shed like tears (obsolete).^[4]
• before 1616 – to tell with grief or lamentation (obsolete).^[4]
• 1632 – intransitive, to lament, to mourn.^[4]
• 1851 – to regard as scandalous, to disapprove of strongly.^[4][16]

Meanings

Verb

1. To feel or express strong disapproval of something; to censure: The editorial deplored the closure of the library.^[17][4][3]
2. To feel or express deep grief over; to lament: The village deplored the loss of its old doctor.^[17][3][4]
3. To regret strongly: I deplore that we cannot attend.^[3][4]
4. (obsolete, 1559–1710) To regard as hopeless; to give up.^[4][3]

Word family

• deplorer
• deploringly
• undeplored

Related words

• deplorable
• implore
• explore

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
3. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
6. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
9. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
10. ^ Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
11. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
12. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
13. ^ a b Partridge, Eric (1966), Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 4th ed., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
14. ^ Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
15. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
16. ^ a b Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
17. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins