ache
v.v. to feel a continuous, dull pain in a part of your body. You use this word for pains that are not sharp or sudden.
v. to suffer from a persistent, dull pain. Intransitive; typically used with body parts or general physical states.
My head aches after the long meeting.
Her legs ached after hiking up the steep mountain trail all afternoon.
The old injury ached whenever the weather turned cold, serving as a constant reminder of the accident years ago.
From Middle English aken (verb), and ache (noun), from Old English acan (verb) (from Proto-West Germanic akan, from Proto-Germanic akaną (“to ache”)) and æċe (noun) (from Proto-West Germanic aki, from Proto-Germanic akiz), both from Proto-Indo-European *h₂eg- (“sin, crime”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian eeke, ääke (“to ache, fester”), Low German aken, achen, äken (“to hurt, ache”), German Low German Eek (“inflammation”), North Frisian akelig, æklig (“terrible, miserable, sharp, intense”), West Frisian aaklik (“nasty, horrible, dismal, dreary”), Dutch akelig (“nasty, horrible”). 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; the noun was originally pronounced as /eɪt͡ʃ/ as spelled (compare breach, from break). Historically the verb was spelled ake, and the noun ache (even after the form /eɪk/ started to become common for the noun; compare again break which is now also a noun). The verb came to be spelled like the noun when lexicographer Samuel Johnson mistakenly assumed that it derived from Ancient Greek ἄχος (ákhos, “pain”) due to the similarity in form and meaning of the two words.
From Middle English ache, from Old French ache, from Latin apium (“celery”). Reinforced by modern French ache.
Representing the pronunciation of the letter H.
Intransitive verb; often followed by 'in' when specifying the location of the pain.