grief
noun
Simple meaning
Emotional pain, generally that comes from misfortune, significant personal loss, bereavement, misconduct of oneself or others.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
greefIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈɡɹif
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
Emotional pain, generally arising from misfortune, significant personal loss, bereavement, misconduct of oneself or others, etc.; sorrow; sadness.
countable
A cause or instance of sorrow or pain; that which afflicts or distresses; a trial.
Suffering, hardship.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B2 · Upper Intermediate
- Frequency
- Moderately Common
- Typical Use
- Neutral / general English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Emotional pain, generally arising from misfortune, significant personal loss, bereavement, misconduct of oneself or others, etc.; sorrow; sadness.
Used this way, grief is a reasonably familiar word carrying real weight of difficulty or hurt. It carries more force than its gentler alternatives. It turns up most in personal or emotional discussion and literature or storytelling contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Strongly negative
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Strong
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Strongly negative / painful
- Usage feel
- Everyday but emotionally strong
Where it naturally appears
- Personal/emotional discussion
- Literature/storytelling
Usage note
Grief is emotionally heavy: it suggests deep or lasting feeling, not a passing mood, so it can overstate a small reaction.
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use grief
- “Her death was a great grief to John.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Related Words
Connected to the same idea, not synonyms.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: emotional pain or generally arising from misfortune
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.