condole

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English

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Etymology

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Borrowed from Latin condoleo (“to suffer with another”).

Pronunciation

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Verb

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condole (third-person singular simple present condoles, present participle condoling, simple past and past participle condoled)

  1. (intransitive) To express sympathetic sorrow; to lament in sympathy (with someone on something).
    • 1674, William Temple, “To the Countess of Essex upon Her Grief occasioned by the loss of Her only Daughter” in Miscellanea, London: Edward Gellibrand, 1680, pp. 170-171,[1]
      […] your friends would have cause to rejoyce rather than condole with you […]
    • 1813 January 27, [Jane Austen], chapter 5, in Pride and Prejudice: […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), London: […] [George Sidney] for T[homas] Egerton, […], →OCLC:
      “ […] lady Lucas has been very kind; she walked here on Wednesday morning to condole with us, and offered her services, or any of her daughters, if they could be of use to us.”
    • 1847 March 30, Herman Melville, “Queen Pomaree”, in Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas; […], London: John Murray, […], →OCLC, page 309:
      […] Tanee was accosted by certain good fellows, friends and boon companions, who condoled with him on his misfortunes—railed against the queen, and finally dragged him away to an illicit vender of spirits, in whose house the party got gloriously mellow.
    • 1871–1872, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], “chapter 44”, in Middlemarch […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to IV), Edinburgh, London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, book (please specify |book=I to VIII):
      Since the Captain’s visit, she had received a letter from him, and also one from Mrs. Mengan, his married sister, condoling with her on the loss of her baby […]
    • 1900, Stephen Crane, “God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen”, in Wounds in the Rain: War Stories‎[2], New York: Frederick A. Stokes, page 75:
      Little Nell condoled and condoled without difficulty. He laid words of gentle sympathy before them, and smothered his own misery behind the face of a reporter of the New York Eclipse.
  2. (transitive) To condole with (someone).
    • 1599 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life of Henry the Fift”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene i]:
      Let us condole the knight; for, lambkins we will live.
    • 1662, John Donne, “A Cabinet of Merry Conceits” in Donne’s Satyr, London: M. Wright, No. 98, p. 64,[3]
      I not condole the dead, but those who’re living,
      To whom the fear of death, gives cause of grieveing.
    • 1958, Karen Blixen (as Isak Dinesen), “Babette’s Feast” in Anecdotes of Destiny, London: Michael Joseph,[4]
      When in early days the sisters had gently condoled her upon her losses, they had been met with that majesty and stoicism of which Monsieur Papin had written. ‘What will you ladies?’ she had answered, shrugging her shoulders, ‘it is Fate.’
  3. (transitive) To say in an expression of sympathy.
  4. (transitive, India, chiefly obsolete in other dialects) To lament, grieve, bemoan (something).
    • 1624, John Donne, “23. Meditation”, in Devotions upon Emergent Occasions‎[7], London: Thomas Jones, page 599:
      […] compassion it selfe, comes to no great degree, if wee haue not felt, in some proportion, in our selues, that which wee lament and condole in another.
    • 1680, John Dryden, “The Preface to Ovid’s Epistles” in Ovid’s Epistles translated by several hands, London: Jacob Tonson,[8]
      If Julia were then Married to Agrippa, why should our Poet make his Petition to Isis, for her safe Delivery, and afterwards, Condole her Miscarriage; which for ought he knew might be by her own Husband?
    • 1703, William Dampier, chapter 5, in A New Voyage Round the World‎[9], volume I, London: James Knapton, page 127:
      […] whether it be natural to the Indians to be thus melancholy, or the effect of their Slavery, I am not certain: But I have always been prone to believe, that they are then only condoling their Misfortunes, the loss of their Country and Liberties […]
    • 1720, Daniel Defoe, The Life, Adventures, and Pyracies, Of the Famous Captain Singleton‎[10], London: J. Brotherton, pages 69–70:
      As soon as we had fired, they set up the horridest Yell, or Howling, partly raised by those that were wounded, and partly by those that pitied and condoled the Bodies they saw lye dead, that I never heard any thing like it before or since.
    • 1993, William Dalrymple, City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi, New York: Penguin, →ISBN, page 74:
      If the Times is to be believed, Indian politicians like nothing better than a quick condole; and certainly barely a day passes without a picture of, say, the Chief Minister of Haryana condoling Mrs Parvati Chaudhuri over the death of Mr Devi Chaudhuri, the director-general of All-India Widgets.
    • 2020, MixIndia, Actor Ravi Vallathol Passes away‎[11]:
      Ramesh Chennithala, Leader of the Opposition, condoled the death of veteran film serial writer and writer Ravi Vallathol.

Derived terms

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Translations

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Anagrams

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Latin

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Pronunciation

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Verb

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condolē

  1. second-person singular present active imperative of condoleō
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