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woeful. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
woeful, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say
woeful in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word
woeful you have here. The definition of the word
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woeful, as well as those of other words, enriches your vocabulary and provides you with more and better linguistic resources.
English
Alternative forms
Etymology
From Middle English woful, waful, equivalent to woe + -ful. Compare Old English wālīċ (“woeful”), Old English tēonful (“woeful”).
Pronunciation
Adjective
woeful (comparative woefuller, superlative woefullest)
- 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 Short for Simon Waterson, →OCLC:How many woeful widows left to bow / To sad disgrace!
- Bringing calamity, distress, or affliction.
a woeful event
a woeful lack of restraint
- Lamentable, deplorable.
c. 1598–1600 (date written), William Shakespeare, “As You Like It”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies (First Folio), London: Isaac Iaggard, and Ed Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, , lines 1033-36:Thou seest we are not all alone unhappy:
This wide and universal theatre
Presents more woeful pageants than the scene
Wherein we play in.
- 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!
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