woeful

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English

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Alternative forms

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Etymology

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From Middle English woful, waful, equivalent to woe +‎ -ful. Compare Old English wālīċ (woeful), Old English tēonful (woeful).

Pronunciation

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Adjective

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woeful (comparative woefuller, superlative woefullest)

  1. Full of woe; sorrowful; distressed with grief or calamity.
    • 1595, Samuel Daniel, “(please specify the folio number)”, in The First Fowre Bookes of the Ciuile Wars between the Two Houses of Lancaster and Yorke, London: [] P[eter] Short for Simon Waterson, →OCLC:
      How many woeful widows left to bow / To sad disgrace!
  2. Bringing calamity, distress, or affliction.
    a woeful event
    a woeful lack of restraint
  3. Lamentable, deplorable.
  4. Wretched; paltry; poor.
    • 1711, Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism; republished in The Complete Poetical Works of Alexander Pope, Boston, New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1902, page 72:
      What woful stuff this madrigal would be / In some starv'd hackney sonneteer or me!

Synonyms

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Derived terms

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