Woeful

//ˈwəʊfəl// adj

adj ·Common ·Middle school level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Full of woe; sorrowful; distressed with grief or calamity.

    "How many woeful widows left to bow / To sad disgrace!"

  2. 2
    Bringing calamity, distress, or affliction.

    "a woeful event"

  3. 3
    Lamentable, deplorable.

    "Thou seest we are not all alone unhappy: This wide and universal theatre Presents more woeful pageants than the scene Wherein we play in."

  4. 4
    Wretched; paltry; poor.

    "What woful stuff this madrigal would be / In some starv'd hackney sonneteer or me!"

Adjective
  1. 1
    affected by or full of grief or woe wordnet
  2. 2
    of very poor quality or condition wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
deplorablewoebegonemiserablesadatrabiliaryatrabilious

Example

More examples

"That's why I love that Don Quixote's added title was "The Knight of the Woeful Countenance.""

Etymology

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

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.