1655 Deep Condole

Recently I was in a position where I had to offer my condolences to someone. And I wasn't entirely sure what a condolence was. Much less that I had a bunch of them to spread around.
So looked it up and, of course, condolences are nothing more, or less, than sympathy with another in sorrow. So you could say, "I offer my sympathy." But it sounds more impressive somehow, maybe because of the plural, to offer your condolences.
The dictionary also defines condolence as "an expression of sympathy," and then goes on to use it in the sentence. "We wish to express our sincere condolences to your family." So they're really saying, "We wish to express our sincere expressions of sympathy to your family."
Condolent and redundant.
Another thing. We express sympathy by offering condolences, but when we are sharing sympathy, we console people. Why don't we offer consolences. Or condole people?
Turns out there is a word condole. And it is a verb. It means to express sympathetic sorrow to someone else. It's from the Latin condolere, "dolere" meaning to feel pain and "con" from com to communicate same. So you could actually say, "I heard about your loss so I'm here to condole you."
One final note. Unfortunately I looked "condole" up in the Merriam Webster online dictionary. And they have this other feature that suggests rhymes of the word you are looking for. In case you ever need to do a poem using condole and something else. Among those offered were bunghole and blowhole.
"When first I offered him to condole.
He said instead to shut my blowhole."
Destined for the condolence section of a Hallmark near you...
America, ya gotta love it.