woesome

/ˈwəʊsəm/

woesome adjective: characterised or marked by woe; woeful.

Adjective

woesome (comparative more woesome, superlative most woesome)

Characterised or marked by woe; woeful
- 'But it will make thee much bewail, / And it will make thy fair eye swell—' / She said, and told the woesome tale, / As sooth as shepherdess might tell.c. 1765, John Langhorne, Owen of Carron
- I could not help seeing a woesome picture. “Poor little soul, with the blood pouring from her heart and her brown hair spread over her dead father's breast!”2008, Frances Hodgson Burnett, The White People

Nicole caught her breath at the muffled, woesome sighs: Douanier-Lieutenant Peder LaMotte, Acting Capitaine of Concarneau, her love and her father's nemesis, was weeping.2011, Jan Tucker Mulligan, Smuggler's Legacy:
To dissect my thoughts is a woesome tale [...]2014, Glenda Paisley, My Life in Poetry:
But here comes woesome old me and my maw down the yard with battered suitcases arriving almost like phantoms dripping from the sea.2016, Jack Kerouac, Desolation Angels:

comparative	more woesome
superlative	most woesome

From woe + -some.

What does woesome mean?: Woesome means characterised or marked by woe; woeful.
How do you use woesome in a sentence?: Nicole caught her breath at the muffled, woesome sighs: Douanier-Lieutenant Peder LaMotte, Acting Capitaine of Concarneau, her love and her father's nemesis, was weeping.
What part of speech is woesome?: Woesome is an adjective.
How do you pronounce woesome?: Woesome is pronounced /ˈwəʊsəm/.

Adapted from Wiktionary: woesome (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

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