Contrist

Part of speech: verb

Pronunciation: /kənˈtɹɪst/

Definitions

1. To make sorrowful or cause to become sad
2. To induce a feeling of sorrow or sadness in someone
3. To bring about a state of unhappiness or grief

Etymology: "Contrist" is a rare, rather literary verb meaning to make someone feel sorrow. It comes from Old French "contrister," which in turn descends from the Latin "contristare," built from "con-," an intensifying prefix, and "tristis," meaning "sad." The same Latin root gave English "tristful" and "tristitia," and it is also the source of the Old French word that gave English "sadness" its older cousins in the romance vocabulary. The verb is a doublet of "contristate," meaning the two words came into English by separate routes from the same Latin source and ended up as near-synonyms. Because "contrist" passed through French, its form stayed closer to the Latin stem, while "contristate" was formed more directly from Latin, which explains why the two look and sound slightly different. Both were used in the same sense of inflicting grief on someone, and both are now uncommon.