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disconsolate

UK/dɪsˈkɒnsəlɪt/US/dɪsˈkɑnsəlɪt/
adjectiveC1Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechneutralformal · an editor’s judgement

Disconsolate means too unhappy to be comforted. Nothing anybody says is going to help.

The word contains its own explanation, since being disconsolate means being beyond consolation. It describes people and their appearance, so a disconsolate figure at the end of a platform is a whole picture in three words. Sport uses it constantly for losing teams. It is formal and slightly literary, and the adverb disconsolately usually attaches to a verb of sitting or standing.

Definitions of disconsolate

  1. 1adjectivedisconsolateSo unhappy that nothing can comfort you.C1

    “He sat disconsolate on the bottom step.”

Where it comes from

  1. Medieval Latin

    discōnsōlātus — comfortless

  2. English, today

    disconsolate

From Medieval Latin discōnsōlātus (“comfortless”), from dis- + cōnsōlātus.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove, A Song of Ice and Fire

First appears in chapter 17 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

disconsolate in the wild

  • The songs are imbued with the same strikingly disconsolate singing and devastatingly poignant prose that J.

    Cancer and Delirium

  • When his wife died of tuberculosis in 1822, he became disconsolate and went adventuring with his son James.

    Sylvester Pattie

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.