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woe is me

intj
/ˌwəʊ ɪz ˈmiː/UK/ˌwoʊ ɪz ˈmi/US

Etymology

Here, the oblique pronoun me denotes not an informal copulative complement (as in this is me), but an indirect object, wherefore it literally means woe is to me, an obsolete way of saying I feel woe; compare German mir ist traurig (“I feel sad”, literally “to-me [it] is sad”). Idiomatically, it means woe is upon me. See also German weh ist mir and its descendant, Yiddish וויי איז מיר (vey iz mir), which are identical in form and meaning to the English expression.

  1. derived from expression

Definitions

  1. Used to show that the speaker feels distress or misery

    Used to show that the speaker feels distress or misery; humorous use usually also signals self-awareness regarding excessive self-pity.

    • Blasted with extasie. Oh, woe is me, T'haue seene what I haue seene: see what I see.
    • Woe is me, that I soiourne in Mesech: that I dwell in the tents of Kedar.
    • “Ah, woe is me! Alas, for my kingdom and my kinfolk!”

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for woe is me. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA