Other forms: aching, aches, ached
An ache is a dull pain that will not let go. Legs after a long walk, a tooth throbbing at two in the morning, a back that aches every time you stand up out of a low chair.
It is a noun as well as a verb, and the noun likes to fuse with body parts: headache, toothache, stomach ache, backache, earache. Aching muscles, an achy shoulder. Keep it apart from a sharp pain — a stab is sudden and bright, an ache is slow and wide and dull. It carries longing too: to ache for home, to be aching to leave, a heart that aches. And aches and pains, in the plural, is what people call the small everyday complaints of an ordinary body.
1verbacheTo hurt with a dull, continuous pain.
“My shoulders ache after a day of painting the ceiling.”
2nounsorenessA dull, continuous pain.
“There was a deep ache in his knee whenever the weather turned.”
synonyms: pain, soreness
3verblongTo want something so badly that it feels like pain.
“She was aching to tell someone the news and could hardly sit still.”
Ache comes from Old English acan, from Proto-Germanic *akaną, which already meant to ache. It used to be a strong verb, changing its vowel the way take does: I ake, I oke, I have aken. Over the centuries it went quiet and regular and now it just adds a -d — but the word has been naming the same slow pain for a thousand years.
Proto-Germanic
*akaną — to ache
Proto-West Germanic
*akan
Old English
acan
Middle English
aken
English, today
ache
Middle English aken, and ache, from Old English acan (from Proto-West Germanic akan, from Proto-Germanic akaną (“to ache”)) and æċe (from Proto-West Germanic aki, from Proto-Germanic akiz), traditionally explained as from a Proto-Indo-European h₂égos. Cognate with stq eeke, ääke (“to ache, fester”), Low German aken, achen, äken (“to hurt, ache”), German Low German Eek (“inflammation”), frr akelig, æklig (“terrible, miserable, sharp, intense”), West Frisian aaklik (“nasty, horrible, dismal, dreary”), Dutch akelig (“nasty, horrible”). The verb was originally strong, conjugating for tense like take (e.g. I ake, I oke, I have aken), but gradually became weak during Middle English; the noun was originally pronounced as as spelled (compare breach, from break). Historically the verb was spelled ake, and the noun ache (even after the form started to become common for the noun; compare again break which is now also a noun). The verb came to be spelled like the noun when lexicographer Samuel Johnson mistakenly assumed that it derived from Ancient Greek ἄχος (“pain”) due to the similarity in form and meaning of the two words.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Body & Health, A Man Called Ove
First appears in chapter 12 of A Man Called Ove.
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