woebegone
adjective
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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
Dan Walters, Mercury News, 26 Apr. 2025
Sunday, the Sox, who are now an impossibly bad 31-100, locked up the sixth triple-digit-loss season in their woebegone history with a 9-4 defeat at the hands of the Detroit Tigers.
—Jon Greenberg, The Athletic, 25 Aug. 2024
This is what passes for epiphany for the solemn, solitary Jane, who searches for self-knowledge in a woebegone key.
—Parul Sehgal, The New Yorker, 5 Aug. 2024
Beginning his act while seated in the audience, with a cowboy hat obscuring his impossibly angular features, Gosling was in character as the woebegone Ken, a macho hunk doomed to play beta in the toy netherworld of Barbie.
—Spencer Kornhaber, The Atlantic, 11 Mar. 2024
See All Example Sentences for woebegone
Cite this Entry
“Woebegone.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/woebegone. Accessed 3 Jul. 2025.
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woebegone
adjective
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