doglioso

Forms

doglioso (feminine dogliosa, masculine plural dogliosi, feminine plural dogliose)^[1] Old Italian forms include dolioso, doioso, dolloso and southern doliusu.^[2]

Etymology

It is formed from Italian doglia (“pain, grief”) + -oso.^{[3][4][2][5][6]} Wiktionary and Körting also allow a Vulgar Latin *doliōsus, which Körting sets beside Romanian duios and Spanish dolioso.^[7] Wiktionary compares Friulian duliôs.^[1]

The noun comes from Late Latin dolium (“pain”), whose plural dolia became a feminine singular; the noun was drawn from Latin doleō (“to feel pain”).^[8][9] De Vaan traces the verb to a causative of the PIE root Proto-Indo-European *delh₁- (“to split”), pain being felt as being torn apart.^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLIO's first record is in Ruggieri d'Amici, from the first half of the 13th century and in Tuscan form;^[2][5] Zingarelli dates the word to before 1250.^[2][5] Its first sense in the TLIO is “causing bodily suffering”, and it soon also meant “feeling pain”, of a person or a sore part of the body.^[2]

Semantic evolution

In Old Italian the word covered bodily and mental suffering: what causes pain or regret, a person in sorrow or mourning, and a battle with heavy losses; as a noun it meant a sufferer.^[2] Iacopone, Dante and Petrarch use it of grief, and Dante's “painful wounds” (ferute dogliose) show the active sense “causing pain”.^[11][12][3]

Tommaseo noted in 1861 that the word and its kin belonged to written language only, except for doglia in its bodily sense.^[12] Today it is literary and poetic, and the active sense is archaic.^[3][5][13]

Timeline

• 1200–1250 – Ruggieri d'Amici has the earliest record.^[2]
• 1861 – Tommaseo calls it a word of written language only.^[12]

Meanings

Adjective

1. (literary) sorrowful, grieving, full of pain: Rimase a lungo dogliosa dopo la partenza del figlio.^{[3][4][13][6]}
2. (literary, archaic) Causing pain, painful.^[3][4][5][6]

Word family

• dogliosamente

Related words

• doglia
• dolore
• doloroso
• dolere

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
3. ^ a b c d e De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
4. ^ a b c Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
5. ^ a b c d e Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
6. ^ a b c Gabrielli, Aldo (2020), Grande dizionario italiano, digital ed., Milano: Hoepli
7. ^ Körting, Gustav (1907), Lateinisch-romanisches Wörterbuch: etymologisches Wörterbuch der romanischen Hauptsprachen, 3rd ed., Paderborn: Schöningh
8. ^ Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
9. ^ Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
10. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
11. ^ Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca, p. 4
12. ^ a b c Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
13. ^ a b Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)