The word for today is…

dolorous (adjective):

: causing, marked by, or expressing misery or grief

Source : Merriam -Webster

Etymology : If you’ve ever studied a Romance language, 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 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, perhaps, of some) its use is now rare. One of the basic tenets of clinical medicine is the recognition of the five cardinal signs of acute inflammation. These I always remember in Latin – rubor (redness), tumor (swelling), calor (heat), dolor (tenderness) and loss of function (I don’t know the Latin for that).

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David is a retired surgeon originally from London who came to New Zealand twenty-seven years ago after being delayed in Singapore for thirteen years on leaving the UK. He was coerced into studying Latin...