Word.ws English Dictionary

woes

/woʊz/

woes is the plural of woe.

Meaning of woe

Noun (1)

woe (countable and uncountable, plural woes)

  1. Great sadness or distress; a misfortune causing such sadness.
    • Oh, woe is me!
  2. Calamity, trouble.
    • And I beheld, and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabiters of the earth by reason of the other voices of the trumpet of the three angels, which are yet to sound!1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Revelation 8:13
  3. A curse; a malediction.
    • Can there be a woe or curse in all the stores of vengeance equal to the malignity of such a practice?1692–1717, Robert South, Twelve Sermons Preached upon Several Occasions, volume (please specify |volume=I to VI), London

Noun (2)

woe (plural woes)

  1. (slang, Baltimore, African-American Vernacular) A close friend; a nigga, homie or bro.

See all 6 meanings of woe

Questions about woes

What is woes the plural of?
Woes is the plural of woe.
How do you pronounce woes?
Woes is pronounced /woʊz/ (US).

Words near woes in the dictionary

  1. Woelfels
  2. Woensdrecht
  3. Woerden
  4. Woerner
  5. Woerners
  6. woes
  7. Woeseian
  8. Woesian
  9. woesome
  10. Woessner
  11. Woessners

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: woes (page history and authors); woe (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-woes.ogg.

Cite this entry: “woes.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/woes. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.