woebegone
/ˈwoʊbiˌɡɔn/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.62 in modern English
15
Scrabble Score
9
Letters
3
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Of a person: deeply affected or overwhelmed by suffering or trouble, and so filled with woe (“great distress or sadness”); (loosely) forlorn, sad, unhappy.
adj
Of a person or thing: having a distressed, miserable, or sad appearance.
adj
Of a thing: in a deplorable state.
Example Sentences
- "[M]ake an ende of mone, / For you are ſicke, and ſhe is woe begone."
- "Thou trembleſt, and the vvhitenes in thy cheeke, / Is apter then thy tongue to tell thy arrand, / Euen ſuch a man, ſo faint, ſo ſpiritleſſe, / So dull, ſo dead in looke, ſoe vvoe begon, / Drevv Priams curtaine in the dead of night, / And vvould haue told him halfe his Troy vvas burnt: […]"
- "Pipe he could not, his cheeks vvere grovvne ſo thinne, / His pipe-bagge torne, no vvind it could keep in, / […] / His Flockes did pine (all vvent contrary vvay) / Heere lay Admetus, there his Sheep-crooke lay, /. All vvea-begane, thus liu'd the Shepheard long, […]"
- "Behold that lofty shade, who this way tends, / And seems too woe-begone to drop a tear."
- "He was in better ſpirits than poor Frank Caſtlewood, who Eſmond thought might be woe-be-gone on account of parting with his divine Clotilda; […]"
- "The woebegone children have their aspirations slowly snuffed. Grace's artistic dreams (of animation, of course) are punctured by her isolated existence; Gilbert's pyrophilia is smothered by religious extremism."
Etymology
From Middle English wo-bigon, wo-begon (“(adjective) deeply affected by woe, distressed, sorrowful, wretched; affected by physical impairment or pain; tired, weary; abominable, cursed; (noun) unfortunate person, wretch”), from wo (“distress, misery, woe; physical pain or suffering; etc.”) + bigon (the past participle form of bigon (“of a state: to come upon or overtake (someone), beset, overwhelm, bego; of a person: to be overwhelmed by grief, etc.”)): * wo is derived from Old English wā (“woe”), from Proto-West Germanic *wai (“woe!”, interjection), from Proto-Germanic *wai (“woe!”, interjection), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *wáy (“ah!, oh!; alas!, woe!”, interjection). * bigon is derived from Old English begān (“to go over, traverse; to beset, surround; to occupy; to overrun; etc.”), from Proto-West Germanic *bigān, from *bi- (from Proto-Germanic *bi- (prefix meaning ‘at; by’), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₁épi (“at; near; on”)) + *gān (“to go”) (from Proto-Germanic *gāną (“to go; to walk”), from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰeh₁- (“to go; to reach; to abandon, leave”)). By surface analysis, woe + begone (the past participle form of bego (“(obsolete) to affect”)). Noun sense 1 (“person who is deeply affected or overwhelmed by suffering or trouble, and so filled with woe”) became obsolete after the 14th or 15th century, and was only revived in the 19th century.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈwoʊbiˌɡɔn/
- British English: /ˈwəʊbɪɡɒn/