Definition of "dolorous"

Through dolorous despaire, which she conceyved,Into the Sea her selfe did headlong throw,Thinking to have her griefe by death bereaved.

1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book V, Canto IV”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie

. . Hell itself will pass away,And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day.

1645, John Milton, On the Morning of Christ's Nativity, stanza 14

From this prison here of horror, whence I every hour tend nearer and nearer to destruction, I send you . . the assurance of my dolorous and unhappy service.

1859, Charles Dickens, chapter 30, in A Tale of Two Cities

She turned and waved a hand to him, she cried a word, but he didn't hear it, it was a lost word. A sable wraith she was in the parkland, fading away into the dolorous crypt of winter.

1922, Michael Arlen, “3/2/1”, in “Piracy”: A Romantic Chronicle of These Days‎

As World War II came to a close, the gaunt and dolorous child was liberated at yet another death camp, Buchenwald.

2001 June 24, Stefan Kanfer, “Author, Teacher, Witness”, in Time