troublous

English

Etymology

Inherited from Middle English troublous, from Anglo-Norman troublous and Middle French troubleus, corresponding to trouble +‎ -ous.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈtɹʌbləs/

Adjective

troublous (comparative more troublous, superlative most troublous)

1. (obsolete) Of a liquid: thick, muddy, full of sediment.
2. (now archaic or literary) Troubled, confused; causing trouble; troublesome, vexatious.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto I”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:

     On thother side they saw the warlike Mayd
     Al in her snow-white smocke, with locks unbowned
     Threatning the point of her avenging blaed;
     That with so troublous terror they were all dismayd.

   • 1837, Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution: A History […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Chapman and Hall, →OCLC, (please specify the book or page number):

     The troublous Day has brawled itself to rest: no lives yet lost but that of one warhorse.

   • a. 1881, Oscar Wilde, 'The Garden of Eros', in Poems‎^[1]:

     Morris, our sweet and simple Chaucer's child,
     Dear heritor of Spenser's tuneful reed,
     With soft and sylvan pipe has oft beguiled
     The weary soul of man in troublous need,
     And from the far and flowerless fields of ice
     Has brought fair flowers meet to make an earthly paradise.

   • 1891, Mary Noailles Murfree, In the "Stranger People's" Country, Nebraska, published 2005, page 1:

     the mystery, the pervasive melancholy, the vaguely troublous forecast and retrospect which possess the mind in contemplating this sequestered spot, unhallowed save by the sense of a common humanity [...]

   • 1917, Henry James, The Sense of the Past:

     The whole waited, for didn't there hang behind this troublous foreground the vast vagueness which the English themselves spoke of as "abroad"?

   • 1953, James Baldwin, “Gabriel's Prayer”, in Go Tell It on the Mountain (Penguin Classics), London: Penguin Books, published 2001, →ISBN:

     By and by he fell into a troublous sleep—it seemed that he was going to be stoned, and then he was in battle, and then shipwrecked in the water– […]

Derived terms

• troublously
• troublousness
• untroublous

Middle English

Alternative forms

• trobleus, troblus, troublouse, troublws, trowblews, trubleuse
• trobolous, troubelose, troubelous, trowbelous, trubellus, trubilose (with orthographic svarabhakti)
• troblesse, troubles, trowblas, trowblys, trublys (with final vowel reduction)

Etymology

Borrowed from Middle French troubleus and Anglo-Norman troublous; by surface analysis, trouble (“disturbance”) +‎ -ous (“-ous”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˌtruːb(ə)ˈluːs/, /ˌtrub(ə)ˈluːs/
• IPA^(key): /ˈtruːb(ə)lus/, /ˈtrub(ə)lus/, /-ləs/ (with retraction of stress)

Adjective

troublous (Late Middle English)

1. (usually of liquid) Muddy, cloudy, opaque.
2. (of weather) Stormy, violent, tempestuous.
3. Troubling, dangerous, challenging.
4. Troubled, disturbed, agitated.

Descendants

• English: troublous
• Middle Scots: troublous

References

• “trǒublǒus, adj.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007.