déconfort

Forms

déconfort m^[1][2] Old French desconfort;^[3][4] Anglo-Norman also descomfort and descumfort.^[3][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old French desconfort (“distress, dejection”), a deverbal noun from French déconforter (“to dishearten”).^[1][5][2] The verb is formed with the prefix dé- on conforter, which goes back to Late Latin confortō (“to strengthen much”).^[1][6] Littré instead analysed the noun directly as the prefix plus confort.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLFi's first record is in Benoît de Sainte-Maure's Roman de Troie (1165–1170), where a great mortality brings grant desconfort to besiegers and besieged alike: “dejection, hopelessness”.^[1][8]

Semantic evolution

In Old French desconfort meant grief, distress and loss of heart, often when help was lacking, and it is common in the lyric poets and chroniclers: Villehardouin writes of the great desconfors of the crusaders at the death of Count Thibaut of Champagne.^[7][4] In Middle French it kept the sense “discouragement, affliction”.^[9] Furetière already labelled it old in 1690, but it survived in literary language;^[1] the GLLF calls it classical and literary, already old in the 17th century.^[2]

About 1900 the word was formed again as a neologism on confort in its modern material sense, “lack of comfort”, as in Huysmans (1903).^[1] The Old French noun also passed into English as discomfort, first meaning “misfortune” (mid-14th century) and “grief, discouragement”; the sense “absence of comfort” is English only from 1841.^[6]

Timeline

• 1165–1170 – Desconfort appears in Benoît de Sainte-Maure's Roman de Troie.^[1]
• Late 12th century – Used by the Châtelain de Coucy.^[2][7]
• Mid-14th century – English borrows it as discomfort.^[6]
• 1690 – Furetière marks it as old.^[1]
• 1897 – Léon Bloy uses it of a helpless, despairing state.^[1]
• 1903 – Huysmans uses it for the lack of material comfort.^[1]

Meanings

Noun

1. (dated, literary) dejection, distress: the state of someone who has lost heart for lack of help.^[1][2][7]
2. (rare) Lack of material comfort, discomfort.^[1]

Related words

• déconforter
• confort
• conforter
• réconfort
• Late Latin confortō
• English discomfort

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Trésor de la langue française informatisé (2004), ATILF – CNRS & Université de Lorraine, atilf.fr/tlfi; electronic version of Imbs, Paul; Quemada, Bernard, eds. (1971–1994), Trésor de la langue française, Paris: CNRS / Gallimard
2. ^ a b c d e Guilbert, Louis; Lagane, René; Niobey, Georges, eds. (1971–1978; 1989), Grand Larousse de la langue française, Paris: Larousse
3. ^ a b Godefroy, Frédéric (1881–1902), Dictionnaire de l'ancienne langue française et de tous ses dialectes du IXe au XVe siècle, 10 vols., Paris: Vieweg / Bouillon
4. ^ a b c Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
5. ^ Rey, Alain, ed. (2005), Le Grand Robert de la langue française, electronic version, Paris: Le Robert
6. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ a b c d Littré, Émile (1873–1877), Dictionnaire de la langue française, 4 vols. and supplement, Paris: Hachette
8. ^ Tobler, Adolf; Lommatzsch, Erhard (1925–2002), Altfranzösisches Wörterbuch, 11 vols., Berlin / Wiesbaden / Stuttgart: Weidmann / Steiner, p. 2:1521
9. ^ Dictionnaire du Moyen Français, version 2015 (DMF 2015), ATILF – CNRS & Université de Lorraine, atilf.fr/dmf