WOE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does woe mean? 

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

1. misery resulting from affliction

2. intense mournfulness

  Familiarity information: WOE used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• WOE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Misery resulting from affliction

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Synonyms:

suffering; woe

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

miserableness; misery; wretchedness (a state of ill-being due to affliction or misfortune)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Intense mournfulness

Classified under:

Nouns denoting feelings and emotions

Synonyms:

woe; woefulness

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

mournfulness; ruthfulness; sorrowfulness (a state of gloomy sorrow)

 Context examples 

“Now woe worth me but I feared it!” cried she, with the color all struck from her face.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

And then woe the dog that had not yet finished!

(White Fang, by Jack London)

"What is it?" cried Jo, forgetting her woes for a minute in her wonder.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

“Good Heaven! what is to become of us? What are we to do?” would they often exclaim in the bitterness of woe.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

The weather was fine; it was about the middle of the month of August, nearly two months after the death of Justine, that miserable epoch from which I dated all my woe.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

I was desolate and afraid, and full of woe and terror; but when that beautiful sun began to climb the horizon life was to me again.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

Well, I was telling you my tale of woe.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The communications were renewed from day to day: they always ran on the same theme—herself, her loves, and woes.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

I could not stand your countenance dressed up in woe and paleness.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

And his cadences were their cadences, the cadences which voiced their woe and what to them was the meaning of the stiffness, and the cold, and dark.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)