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gravamen

Pronunciation: /ɡɹəˈveɪmɛn/

The English word “gravamen” has 5 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. A grievance complained of.
  2. A document sent by the Lower House of Convocation to the Upper House to inform the latter of certain grievances in the church.
  3. The essence or ground of a complaint.
  4. The essence or most important aspect of a piece of writing, a point of argument, etc.; the gist.
  5. A formal charge or complaint.

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”)) +…

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.