Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive verb To suffer a dull, sustained pain.
  • intransitive verb To feel sympathy or compassion.
  • intransitive verb To yearn or long.
  • noun A dull, steady pain. synonym: pain.
  • noun A painful sorrow.
  • noun A longing or desire.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Pain of some duration, in opposition to sudden twinges or spasmodic pain; a continued dull or heavy pain, as in toothache or earache.
  • noun Synonyms See pain, n., and agony.
  • To suffer pain; have or be in pain, or in continued pain; be distressed physically: as, his whole body ached.
  • noun A name of garden-parsley, Petroselinum sativum.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Continued pain, as distinguished from sudden twinges, or spasmodic pain. “Such an ache in my bones.”
  • intransitive verb To suffer pain; to have, or be in, pain, or in continued pain; to be distressed.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun rare A variant spelling of aitch.
  • noun obsolete Parsley.
  • verb intransitive To suffer pain; to be the source of, or be in, pain, especially continued dull pain; to be distressed.
  • noun Continued dull pain, as distinguished from sudden twinges, or spasmodic pain.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb have a desire for something or someone who is not present
  • noun a dull persistent (usually moderately intense) pain
  • verb feel physical pain
  • verb be the source of pain

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English aken, from Old English acan.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old French and modern French ache, from Latin apium ("parsley").

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Representing the pronunciation of the letter H.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English aken (v), and ache (noun), from Old English acan (v) (from Proto-Germanic *akanan (“to be bad, be evil”)) and æċe (noun) (from Proto-Germanic *akiz), both from Proto-Indo-European *ag- (“sin, crime”). Cognate with Low German aken, achen, äken ("to hurt, to ache"), North Frisian akelig, æklig ("terrible, miserable, sharp, intense"), West Frisian aaklik ("nasty, horrible, dismal, dreary"), Dutch akelig ("nasty, horrible"). The noun was originally pronounced as spelled, with a palatized ch sound (compare batch, from bake); the verb was originally strong, conjugating for tense like take (e.g. I ake, I oke, I have aken), but gradually became weak during Middle English. Historically the verb was spelled ake, and the noun ache. The verb came to be spelled like the noun when Samuel Johnson mistakenly assumed that it derived from Ancient Greek ἄχος (áchos, "pain") due to the similarity in form and meaning of the two words.

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