woebegone

adjective

woe·be·gone ˈwō-bi-ˌgȯn

also -ˌgän

Synonyms of woebegone next

: strongly affected with woe : woeful

: exhibiting great woe, sorrow, or misery

a woebegone expression

: being in a sorry state

woebegone tattered clothes

woebegoneness noun

Did you know?

Breaking Down Woebegone

Whoa, whoa, whoa. We know that, at first glance, woebegone looks like a word that has its meaning backwards; after all, if begone means “go away,” shouldn’t woebegone mean “devoid of woe,” or “happy”? Not exactly. The word comes from the Middle English phrase wo begon. The wo in this phrase does indeed mean “woe,” but begon means “beset.” Someone who is woebegone, therefore, is beset with woe. Since the mid-1700s, the word has also been used to describe things that appear to express sadness, as in “the woebegone look on his face when he misplaced his favorite dictionary.”

Examples of woebegone in a Sentence

His face had a woebegone expression. the most woebegone people that I had ever seen in my life

Recent Examples on the Web Jim Davis/Globe Staff While the penalty kill (5 for 5) did its job, allowing six shots, the power play (0 for 5) continued to be a woebegone situation. —

Globe Staff, BostonGlobe.com, 29 Mar. 2023 The Los Angeles Lakers begin a six-game road trip and the biggest question facing the woebegone team is whether Frank Vogel returns to L.A. as the head coach. —

Jeff Zillgitt, USA TODAY, 20 Jan. 2022 Established in 1866, the ASPCA is familiar to many Americans from its fundraising ads featuring woebegone animals, particularly a 2007 spot that featured singer-songwriter Sarah McLachlan and ran for years. —

Jennifer Peltz, ajc, 7 May 2023 While the penalty kill (5 for 5) did its job, allowing six shots, the power play (0 for 5) continued to be a woebegone situation. —

Globe Staff, BostonGlobe.com, 29 Mar. 2023 Its closing sequence features a rapid-fire R.E.M. selection of great images of cinema—Daffy Duck’s loopy visage, Chaplin’s expression of woebegone bewilderment, that lightning-strike of transcendence known as Falconetti—ultimately mingled with flashbacks from Babylon itself. —

Stephanie Zacharek, Time, 16 Dec. 2022 Only the woebegone Oakland Athletics are worse. —

Los Angeles Times, 20 July 2022 All of which makes him, in one sense, an ideal fit in Baltimore, where the Ravens in recent years have invested more in young wide receivers than any other NFL team, where Ravens die-hards have filled more hours of sports talk radio with woebegone comments on their wideouts than any other fan base. —

Jonas Shaffer, baltimoresun.com, 15 June 2021 What do the Glazers, who bought a woebegone NFL franchise that only came into existence as an expansion plan to make other owners rich and which would have spent much of its existence relegated, understand about the roots of a soccer team that lie in the carriage and wagon department of a railway? —

Ann Killion, San Francisco Chronicle, 22 Apr. 2021 See More

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'woebegone.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

Etymology

Middle English wo begon, from wo, noun + begon, past participle of begon to go about, beset, from Old English begān, from be- + gān to go — more at go entry 1

First Known Use

14th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Time Traveler

The first known use of woebegone was in the 14th century

See more words from the same century