Where did the term heart broken come from?

Answer 1

The term refers to the physical pain or discomfort in the chest region that often comes with a loss or a tragic circumstance. In our culture, we tend to associate our emotional feelings with our heart, and therefore we pair the discomfort/pain with the emotional loss and we get "heartache" or "heartbroken."

Although some pain is psychological, there are also physical symptoms as well.

In the extreme, there is an actual condition called stress cardiomyopathy, which is usually triggered by an emotionally stressful incident (i.e. sudden death of a loved one) and is similar to a heartache, only it typically happens in people who have previously been fairly heart-healthy and who typically recover faster after the incident.