woe
noun
Simple meaning
Great sadness or distress.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
wohIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈwoʊ
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
Great sadness or distress; a misfortune causing such sadness.
Calamity, trouble.
A curse; a malediction.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C1 · Advanced (estimated)
- Frequency
- Uncommon
- Formality
- Technical
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Great sadness or distress; a misfortune causing such sadness.
Used this way, woe is a reasonably familiar word with a clearly unfavourable pull. It carries more force than its gentler alternatives. It turns up most in personal or emotional discussion and literature or storytelling contexts.
- Emotional tone
- 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
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: great sadness or distress
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Words can change meaning depending on context.
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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.