Word.ws English Dictionary

woe betide

Syllables: woe be·tideUK/ˌwəʊ bɪˈtaɪd//ˌwoʊ bəˈtaɪd/

woe betide verb: used to warn someone that trouble will occur if that person does something: bad things will happen to.

Verb

woe betide

  1. (humorous, idiomatic, literary, transitive) Used to warn someone that trouble will occur if that person does something: bad things will happen to.
    • Woe betide you if you try that with my sister again!
    • O gentle Aaron, we are all vndone. / Now helpe, or woe betide thee euermore.c. 1588–1593 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Lamentable Tragedy of Titus Andronicus”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac...

woe betide meaning in Vietnamese

woe betide in Vietnamese

bad things will happen to
liệu hồn

Examples of woe betide in a sentence

  • Woe betide the Subſcribers, their Children and Wives, / This Action ſhall coſt 'em five hundred Folks Lives.1701, [William Pittis], “The Non-juring Clergyman”, in Chaucer’s Whims: Being Some Select Fables and Tales in Verse, Very Applicable to the...
  • "God save us!" cried the captain, / "For naught can man avail; / Oh, woe betide the ship that lacks / Her rudder and her sail!["]1865–1866, John Greenleaf Whittier, “The Mantle of St. John de Matha: A Legend of “The Red, White, and Blue,” A.D. 1154–1864”, in The...
  • And woe betide the peasant who protested!2005, E[rnst] H[ans] Gombrich, “A Very Violent Revolution”, in Caroline Mustill, transl., A Little History of the World, New Haven, Conn....

Forms of woe betide

alternative formwoebetide

Origin of woe betide

From Early Modern English woe (“great sadness or distress; calamity, trouble”) + betide (“to happen to, befall”), formerly used to decry a person’s actions. Grammatically, the verb is in the subjunctive mood.

Questions about woe betide

What does woe betide mean?
Woe betide means used to warn someone that trouble will occur if that person does something: bad things will happen to.
What is woe betide in Vietnamese?
Woe betide in Vietnamese is liệu hồn. See Woe betide meaning in Vietnamese.
How do you use woe betide in a sentence?
Woe betide the Subſcribers, their Children and Wives, / This Action ſhall coſt 'em five hundred Folks Lives.
What part of speech is woe betide?
Woe betide is a verb.
How do you pronounce woe betide?
Woe betide is pronounced /ˌwəʊ bɪˈtaɪd/ (UK).

Words near woe betide in the dictionary

  1. Wodzinski
  2. Wodzinskis
  3. Wodzynski
  4. Wodzynskis
  5. woe
  6. woe betide
  7. woe is I
  8. woe is me
  9. woe to
  10. woebegone
  11. woebegonely

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: woe betide (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-woe betide.mp3, En-au-woe betide.ogg.

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