gravamen

Estimated CEFR level: C2 — Proficiency

Estimated from word frequency; not an official CEFR classification.

Etymology

Learned 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). The plural form gravamina is derived from Late Latin gravāmina.

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