Word of the Day:
heartache
What It Means
Emotional distress or pain, often caused by a loved one or their absence.
Heartache in Context
““Well done, sister! I honour your esprit du corps. When I am a wife, I mean to be just as staunch myself; and I wish my friends in general would be so too. It would save me many a heart ache.””
Did You Know?
From Middle English heorteece, heorte-ece, from Old English heorteċe, equivalent to heart + ache. Blends both literal and figurative aspects, as emotional distress sometimes includes a physical element of chest discomfort. Compare heartbreak § Etymology, where the literal aspect is lesser, though it still can be said to have a physiological basis.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: heartache (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the word and reformatted its meaning, examples and origin.
Cite this entry: “heartache.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/heartache. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.