Woes
/woʊz/noun
Plural of woe: great sorrow, distress, or trouble.
Did you know?Woe comes from a very old Germanic exclamation of lament, the kind of word people cried out in pain long before it became a normal noun for suffering.
Etymological Timeline
Proto-Indo-European
PIE
*weh₂-
“to lament, cry out”
Proto-Germanic
PGmc
*wō-
“an exclamation of grief or lament”
Old English
OE
wā
“woe, sorrow; an exclamation of grief”
Middle English
ME
wo
“sorrow, misery, distress”
Modern English
English
woe
“great sorrow or misery”
Modern English
English
woes
“instances or conditions of great sorrow, trouble, or distress”