What does collachrimation mean?

Question

The end Thomas Nashe's novel The Unfortunate Traveller takes a very antisemitic turn when both the novel's main character (Jack Wilton) and his concubine fall into the hands of a Jew named Zadoch. Zadoch wants to sell his prisoner to another Jew, Doctor Zacharie; while Jack Wilton is being transported through the streets of Rome, he is seen by the Marques of Mantua's wive, who is one of the Pope's concubines. Chapter IX ends with the following words (emphasis mine):

At the first sight [the Marques of Mantua's wive] was enamoured with my age and beardles face, that had in it no ill signe of phisiognomie fatall to fetters: after me she sent to know what I was, wherein I had offended, and whether I was going? My conducts resolved them all. Shee having received this answer, with a lustfull collachrimation lamenting my Jewish Premunire, that bodie and goods I should light into the hands of such a cursed generation, invented the means of my release.

I couldn't find "collachrimation" in Wiktionary but I found an instance of the verb collachrimate in Thomas Nashe's Christs teares ouer Ierusalem (emphasis mine):

A Tormentor (that abiureth commiseration) when he first enters into the infancy of his occupation, would collachrimate my case, and rather chuse to haue beene tortured himselfe, them torment me with ingratitude as thou doost.

Based on these usage examples, collachrimation sounds like a synonym or near-synonym of commiseration, but I would like to find confirmation from a source that actually defines the word.

Answer 1

The more common spelling was collachrymate, and you're right that it means essentially to commiserate, specifically in the form of weeping in sympathy. It can also be used as an adjective. From this source:

ADJ.
mingled with tears, accompanied with weeping (obsolete rare)

VERB
1) to weep or lament with, or in sympathy with others; to commiserate (obsolete rare)
2) to exude in the form of tears (obsolete rare)

Its etymology is from the Latin collacrimātus, from col- "with" + lacrimāre "to weep".

(When I searched the web for "collachrimate", one result, relating to Nashe, gave the meaning as "to weep together" and cited the Oxford English Dictionary entry for "collachrymate".)