woe – English adjective declension

Adjective: woe

Comparison Forms

Synthetic

Perifrastic

Comparative	more woe
Superlative	most woe

Sample Sentences

hys clerk was wo to do þat dede [1303, Robert of Brunne, Handlyng synne:]
And looking vp, when as his shield he lakt, / And sword saw not, he wexed wondrous woe [1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto VIII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 53:]
Prospero: I am woe for't, Sir. [1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene i], page 17:]
But long they waited, and longer still, / With doubt and muckle pain, / But woe were the hearts of his brethren, / For he came not back again. [1890, Joseph Jacobs, “Childe Rowland”, in English Fairy Tales, page 118:]

Adjectives inflected like woe

priest-ridden, unreposed, evadible, dissentious, dissentient, unforesighted, egocentrical, unephemeral, unennobling, mensuralist, flocculent, unseductive, whoopsy, whooshy, surrogate, Nicodian, unrepaired, prismatoidal, renorenal, unseducible, etc. (List truncated at 20 adjectives)

Etymology

1. From Middle English wo, woo, from Old English wā, wǣ, from Proto-West Germanic *wai (interjection), from Proto-Germanic *wai (“woe!”, interjection), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *wáy (“oh!; ah!; woe!; alas!”, interjection).
2. Cognates
3. Cognate with Scots wae (“woe”), Cimbrian bèa (“woe!”), Dutch wee (“nauseating”), German Weh, Wehe (“misery, woe; pain”), Yiddish וויי (vey, “pain; woe”), Danish, Norwegian Nynorsk, Norwegian Bokmål, and Swedish ve (“woe”), Icelandic væl (“cry, wail”), væla (“to cry, wail; to complain”), Gothic 𐍅𐌰𐌹 (wai, “woe!”); also Cornish gew, go (“woe!”), Welsh gwae (“misery, woe”), Catalan, Italian, and Portuguese guai (“woe!”), Ladino guay, גואי (“woe”), Latin vae (“woe”), Romanian vai (“woe”), Spanish guay (“way”), Ancient Greek οὐαί (ouaí, “woe!”), Albanian vaj (“woe!”), Latvian vai (“oh!”), Bulgarian уви́ (uví, “alas”), Russian увы́ (uvý, “alas!”), Serbo-Croatian авај, avaj (“alas!”), Armenian վայ (vay, “sorrow, woe”), Persian وای (vây, “woe”). See: Dutch Adjectives 'wee', Spanish Adjectives 'guay'.

Verbs referencing "woe"

German Adjectives weh.