CONDOLENCE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does condolence mean? 

• CONDOLENCE (noun)
  The noun CONDOLENCE has 1 sense:

1. an expression of sympathy with another's grief

  Familiarity information: CONDOLENCE used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• CONDOLENCE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

An expression of sympathy with another's grief

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Synonyms:

commiseration; condolence

Context example:

they sent their condolences

Hypernyms ("condolence" is a kind of...):

acknowledgement; acknowledgment (a statement acknowledging something or someone)

Derivation:

condole (express one's sympathetic grief, on the occasion of someone's death)

condolent (expressing sympathy with a person who experienced the death of a loved one)

 Context examples 

And here, instead of its being a matter of condolence, it turns out to be one of congratulation.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

No letter of condolence had been sent to Ireland.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

She wished me to look after the house, to see callers, and answer notes of condolence.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

My father, in his blunt, sailor fashion, tried to stammer out some commonplace condolence, but her eyes swept past his rude, weather-beaten face to ask and reask what effect she had made upon me.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Assistance is impossible; condolence insufferable.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

Every qualification is raised at times, by the circumstances of the moment, to more than its real value; and she was sometimes worried down by officious condolence to rate good-breeding as more indispensable to comfort than good-nature.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

The neglect had been visited on the head of the sinner; for when poor Lady Elliot died herself, no letter of condolence was received at Kellynch, and, consequently, there was but too much reason to apprehend that the Dalrymples considered the relationship as closed.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)