diff --git a/CHANGES b/CHANGES
index c21146bc7..1dc59cbc5 100644
--- a/CHANGES
+++ b/CHANGES
@@ -85,6 +85,7 @@ Bugs fixed
 * #3295: Could not import extension sphinx.builders.linkcheck
 * #3285: autosummary: asterisks are escaped twice
 * LaTeX, pass dvipdfm option to geometry package for Japanese documents (ref #3363)
+* Fix parselinenos() could not parse left half open range (cf. "-4")
 
 
 Release 1.5.1 (released Dec 13, 2016)
diff --git a/sphinx/util/__init__.py b/sphinx/util/__init__.py
index dfe1f60b9..f619cd02e 100644
--- a/sphinx/util/__init__.py
+++ b/sphinx/util/__init__.py
@@ -357,14 +357,17 @@ def parselinenos(spec, total):
     for part in parts:
         try:
             begend = part.strip().split('-')
-            if len(begend) > 2:
+            if ['', ''] == begend:
                 raise ValueError
-            if len(begend) == 1:
+            elif len(begend) == 1:
                 items.append(int(begend[0]) - 1)
+            elif len(begend) == 2:
+                start, end = begend
+                start = start or 1  # left half open (cf. -10)
+                end = end or total  # right half open (cf. 10-)
+                items.extend(range(int(start) - 1, int(end)))
             else:
-                start = (begend[0] == '') and 0 or int(begend[0]) - 1
-                end = (begend[1] == '') and total or int(begend[1])
-                items.extend(range(start, end))
+                raise ValueError
         except Exception:
             raise ValueError('invalid line number spec: %r' % spec)
     return items
diff --git a/tests/test_util.py b/tests/test_util.py
index 2ee022604..f5d8af0f0 100644
--- a/tests/test_util.py
+++ b/tests/test_util.py
@@ -56,6 +56,7 @@ def test_splitdocinfo():
 def test_parselinenos():
     assert parselinenos('1,2,3', 10) == [0, 1, 2]
     assert parselinenos('4, 5, 6', 10) == [3, 4, 5]
+    assert parselinenos('-4', 10) == [0, 1, 2, 3]
     assert parselinenos('7-9', 10) == [6, 7, 8]
     assert parselinenos('7-', 10) == [6, 7, 8, 9]
     assert parselinenos('1,7-', 10) == [0, 6, 7, 8, 9]