dolours

Noun

dolour (countable and uncountable, plural dolours)

1. (UK, literary, uncountable) Anguish, grief, misery, or sorrow.
   • Who dyes the vtmoſt dolor doth abye, / But who that liues, is lefte to waile his loſſe: / So life is loſſe, and death felicity.1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto IV”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 38, page 455

   Synonyms:

   infelicity, joylessness, sadness, unhappiness, unjoy

   Antonyms:

   elation, felicity, happiness, joy

2. (UK, countable) In economics and utilitarianism: a unit of pain used to theoretically weigh people's outcomes.
   • Supposedly, utilitarians are able to add and subtract hedons (units of pleasure) and dolors (units of pain) without any signs of cognitive or affective distress […]1986, Rosemarie Tong, Ethics in Policy Analysis (Occupational Ethics Series), Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, →ISBN, page 16

   Synonyms:

   dol

   Antonyms:

   hedon, util, utile, utilon