Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 18, 2023 is: dolorous \DOH-luh-rus\ adjective

Dolorous means "causing, marked by, or expressing misery or grief."

// The [acerbic](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/acerbic) and dolorous writings of Charles Bukowski garnered praise among lovers of poetry depicting the lives of the downtrodden in American society.

[See the entry >](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dolorous)

Examples:

"Having haunted arenas longer than some ghosts haunt cathedrals, the Cure have their live sound down to a towering tee. ... Featherlight guitar filigrees land like hammers, dolorous synth string drones rumble from the deep. [Robert] Smith’s agelessly yearning and yelping vocals, his lyrics steeped in suburban [ennui](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ennui) and true love against the big, bad world, are the voice of the eternal moody teen." — Malcolm Jack, The Guardian (London), 5 Dec. 2022

Did you know?

If you’ve ever studied a [Romance language](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Romance%20language), you’ve likely run into words related to Latin dolor, meaning "pain" or "grief." Indeed, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian all refer to pain using descendants of dolor. English (which despite its many Latinate terms is categorized as a [Germanic](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Germanic#h1) language) has dolor to thank for dolorous. When the word first appeared, it was linked to physical pain; as the British surgeon John Banister wrote in 1578, "No medicine may prevail … till the same dolorous tooth be … plucked up by the roots." The "causing pain" sense of dolorous coexisted with the "sorrowful" sense for centuries, but (to the [dolor](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dolor), perhaps, of some) its use is now rare.