gravamen
A grievance complained ofA grievance complained of.
Meaning
5 sensesA grievance complained of.
A grievance complained of.
A document sent by the Lower House of Convocation to the Upper House to inform the latter of certain grievances in the church.
The essence or ground of a complaint.
More meanings 2
(broadly)The essence or most important aspect of a piece of writing, a point of argument, etc.; the gist.
(obsolete)A formal charge or complaint.
Origin
Learned borrowing from Late Latin gravāmen (“physical inconvenience”) and Medieval Latin gLearned borrowing from Late Latin gravāmen (“physical inconvenience”) and Medieval Latin gravāmen (“grievance”), from Latin gravāre + -men (suffix forming neuter nouns of the third declension). Gravāre is the present active infinitive of gravō (“to burden, weigh down; to oppress”), from gravis (“heavy; grave, serious; hard, troublesome”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *gʷreh₂- (“heavy”)) + -ō (suffix forming regular first-conjugation verbs).
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Forms
plural: gravamens / gravaminaSynonyms
34 synonymsLessons for this word
1 lessons- A1Plural nouns — Because its plural is irregular
See also
neighbours in the dictionaryDictionary text adapted from Wiktionary (Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0) and Open English WordNet / Princeton WordNet (CC BY 4.0, WordNet License); shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. Example sentences and recordings are credited where they appear.