dolere

Forms

dolere (first-person singular present dòlgo, first-person singular past historic dòlsi, past participle dolùto, first-person singular future dorrò, auxiliary èssere or (uncommon) avére)^[1] Old Italian had a first person doglio beside dolgo, and past forms dolfi and dolvi beside dolsi.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Latin dolēre (“to feel pain, to hurt”).^[4][5][1] DELI and Zingarelli call it a learned word, but Nocentini finds it in all the Romance languages: French douloir (now obsolete), Occitan doler, Catalan dolre, Spanish doler, Portuguese doer, Sardinian dólere and Romanian durea.^[6][2][4][7] Prati explains the forms with /ʎ/, such as Old Italian doglio (“I grieve”), from the Latin first person singular.^[8]

De Vaan reconstructs Proto-Italic *dolē- (“to pain, cause pain”) from a causative Proto-Indo-European *dolh₁-eie- (“to split”), from the root Proto-Indo-European *delh₁- (“to chop”), on the assumption that pain was felt as being torn apart;^{[9][4][10][1]} Nocentini and DEI connect it with Latin dolo (“to hew with an axe”) through a meaning “to strike”.^{[9][4][10][1]} DELI, GRADIT and Zingarelli call the origin uncertain, and Devoto finds the Indo-European connections unreliable.^{[6][5][2][11]}

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLIO's first record is in Guido Faba's Bolognese Parlamenta of about 1243, with the sense “to cause pain, to hurt”.^[12] DELI dates the physical sense to before 1250 in Cielo d'Alcamo, and the senses “to feel sorrow” and, reflexive, “to lament” to before 1250 in Giacomo da Lentini.^[6]

Semantic evolution

Old Italian used the verb for physical pain, for grief and regret, for taking pains over something and, as a reflexive, for complaining aloud or lodging a formal complaint against someone.^[12] Its present participle dolente “suffering” and “grievous” is in Cavalcanti and Dante, and Dante's dolenti note (Inferno V) for the cries of the damned became, from Pucci on, a joking phrase for unpleasant facts or bills one has to hear.^[6]

Old past forms with -f-, dolfi, dolfe, were common in early writers, as Bembo and Salviati observed.^[3] In modern Italian the verb is used mostly in the third person, of a part of the body that aches or impersonally for regret, and as dolersi “to regret, repent, complain”.^[13][14] It reached South Tyrolean German as dolzen.^[15]

Timeline

• c. 1243 – Guido Faba uses the verb in his Parlamenta.^[12]
• Before 1250 – Cielo d'Alcamo and Giacomo da Lentini use it.^[6]
• Before 1300 – Guido Cavalcanti uses dolente “grievous”.^[6]
• Before 1321 – Dante writes of the dolenti note of the damned.^[6]
• Before 1388 – Antonio Pucci uses dolenti note for unpleasant matters.^[6]

Meanings

Verb

1. To hurt, to ache, of a part of the body or a wound: Da ieri gli duole il ginocchio.^[5][16][14]
2. (impersonal, third person) To grieve, to be a matter of regret: Ci duole dovervi dare questa notizia.^[5][16][14]
3. (rare, literary) To cause harm or anguish.^[5][2]
4. Dolersi: to regret, be sorry for; to repent; to complain of something to someone.^[16][14][13]

Word family

• dolente
• dolenza
• ridolere
• dolicchiare
• doliccicare

Related words

• doglia
• doglioso
• dolore
• dolorifico
• duolo
• condolersi
• Latin doleo

Usage notes

The verb is irregular: dolgo, duoli, duole, dolgono, past dolsi, future dorrò; it takes essere, more rarely avere.^[16][13][2]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli
3. ^ a b Tommaseo, Niccolò; Bellini, Bernardo (1861–1879), Dizionario della lingua italiana, 4 vols., Torino: UTET
4. ^ a b c d Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
5. ^ a b c d e De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
6. ^ a b c d e f g h Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
7. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
8. ^ Prati, Angelico (1951), Vocabolario etimologico italiano, Milano: Garzanti, p. 387
9. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
10. ^ a b Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 1375
11. ^ Devoto, Giacomo (1968), Avviamento alla etimologia italiana: dizionario etimologico, 2nd ed., Firenze: Le Monnier
12. ^ a b c Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (1997–), Opera del Vocabolario Italiano, CNR, Firenze; tlio.ovi.cnr.it
13. ^ a b c Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
14. ^ a b c d Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
15. ^ Stammerjohann, Harro, et al. (2008), Dizionario di italianismi in francese, inglese, tedesco, Firenze: Accademia della Crusca; online at difit.italianisticaonline.it
16. ^ a b c d Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier