dolores umbridge

Interesting thoughts as I ponder one of the new characters to arrive in "Order of the Phoenix."

"Dolores" is plural of "dolor," which means "woe" or "trouble." Umbridge clearly is a homophone of umbrage. Check out the Dictionary.com definition of umbrage. My own thought process was along the lines of the secondary or tertiary definition of "umbrage" that has to deal with jealousy over somebody else's abilities.

Look at the character: She's a lousy teacher, a horrible disciplinarian and apparently a useless witch (except perhaps at espionage). Rowling makes a point of how small Umbridge's wand is; the books indicate that bigger wands indicate greater puissance at magic. The implication is that Umbridge is attacking everyone bigger than she is: Dumbledore, Harry, McGonagall, you name it.

My guess is she was a Slytherin back in school.