woe
UK /wəʊ/ · US /woʊ/ noun, adjective, interjection
Forms woes
- noun Great sadness or distress; a misfortune causing such sadness. “Oh, woe is me!”
- noun Calamity, trouble.
- noun A curse; a malediction.
- adjective (obsolete) Woeful; sorrowful
- interjection (archaic) An exclamation of grief.
- noun (slang, Baltimore, African-American Vernacular) A close friend; a nigga, homie or bro.
Synonyms
grief sorrow misery blueness tristesse mirthless blues crestfallenness dejection depression despondency distress dolefulness downheartedness drearihead forlornness heartsore ill-being infelicity melancholia suffering woefulness
Antonyms
Etymology
From Middle English wo, woo, from Old English wā, wǣ, from Proto-West Germanic *wai (interjection), from Proto-Germanic *wai (“woe!”, interjection), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *wáy (“oh!; ah!; woe!; alas!”, interjection).
Cognate with Scots wae (“woe”), Cimbrian bèa (“woe!”), Dutch wee (“nauseating”), German Weh, Wehe (“misery, woe; pain”), Yiddish וויי (vey, “pain; woe”), Danish, Norwegian Nynorsk, Norwegian Bokmål, and Swedish ve (“woe”), Icelandic væl (“cry, wail”), væla (“to cry, wail; to complain”), Gothic 𐍅𐌰𐌹 (wai, “woe!”); also Cornish gew, go (“woe!”), Welsh gwae (“misery, woe”), Catalan, Italian, and Portuguese guai (“woe!”), Ladino guay, גואי (“woe”), Latin vae (“woe”), Romanian vai (“woe”), Spanish guay (“way”), Ancient Greek οὐαί (ouaí, “woe!”), Albanian vaj (“woe!”), Latvian vai (“oh!”), Bulgarian уви́ (uví, “alas”), Russian увы́ (uvý, “alas!”), Serbo-Croatian авај, avaj (“alas!”), Armenian վայ (vay, “sorrow, woe”), Persian وای (vây, “woe”).
Webster’s 1913
- noun Grief; sorrow; misery; heavy calamity.
- noun A curse; a malediction.
- adjective Woeful; sorrowful. [Obs.]
Etymology [OE. wo, wa, woo, AS. wa, interj.; akin to D. wee, OS. & OHG. we, G. weh, Icel. vei, Dan. vee, Sw. ve, Goth. wai; cf. L. vae, Gr. Wail.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “woe”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details