GRIEF

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does grief mean? 

• GRIEF (noun)
  The noun GRIEF has 2 senses:

1. intense sorrow caused by loss of a loved one (especially by death)

2. something that causes great unhappiness

  Familiarity information: GRIEF used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• GRIEF (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Intense sorrow caused by loss of a loved one (especially by death)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting feelings and emotions

Synonyms:

brokenheartedness; grief; heartache; heartbreak

Hypernyms ("grief" is a kind of...):

sorrow (an emotion of great sadness associated with loss or bereavement)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "grief"):

dolor; dolour ((poetry) painful grief)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Something that causes great unhappiness

Classified under:

Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents

Synonyms:

grief; sorrow

Context example:

her death was a great grief to John

Hypernyms ("grief" is a kind of...):

negative stimulus (a stimulus with undesirable consequences)

 Context examples 

I took it that the very mystery of the proceeding was in some way a counteractant to his grief.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

“Her grief,” replied Traddles, with a serious look.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

That was always the way. Folk who were in grief came to my wife like birds to a lighthouse.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He seemed possessed by an insatiable fury which gave no time for grief.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

He was voicing an utter woe, his cry bursting upward in great heart-breaking rushes, dying down into quavering misery, and bursting upward again with a rush upon rush of grief.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

“Come, Watson,” said he, and we passed from that house of grief into the pale sunlight of the winter day.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I was struck with the utmost grief and despair at my master’s discourse; and being unable to support the agonies I was under, I fell into a swoon at his feet.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Yet, as I drew nearer home, grief and fear again overcame me.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

I give you my word that it was a great grief to young Amory, and it was days ere he could cast it from his mind.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Then he could easily guess what had happened, and much grief reigned in the royal court.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)