Grief
noun, verb ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 Suffering, hardship. countable, uncountable
"The neighbour's teenagers give me grief every time they see me."
- 2 something that causes great unhappiness wordnet
- 3 Emotional pain, generally arising from misfortune, significant personal loss, bereavement, misconduct of oneself or others, etc.; sorrow; sadness. countable, uncountable
"She was worn out from so much grief."
- 4 intense sorrow caused by loss of a loved one (especially by death) wordnet
- 5 A cause or instance of sorrow or pain; that which afflicts or distresses; a trial. countable
"Surely, he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows."
- 1 To deliberately harass and annoy or cause grief to other players of a game in order to interfere with their enjoyment of it; especially, to do this as one’s primary activity in the game, and especially by exploiting game mechanics without using cheats to do so, often through acts of destruction or vandalism. Internet
"While ban and his pals stand squarely in this tradition, they also stand for something new: the rise of organized griefing, grounded in online message-board communities and thick with in-jokes, code words, taboos, and an increasingly articulate sense of purpose. No longer just an isolated pathology, griefing has developed a full-fledged culture."
Example
More examples"Crying is an expression of grief."
Etymology
From Middle English greef, gref, from Old French grief (“grave, heavy, grievous, sad”), from Latin gravis (“heavy, grievous, sad”). Doublet of grave.
Related phrases
More for "grief"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.