woeful

1. 1.

   affected by or full of grief or woe

   “his sorrow...made him look...haggard and...woebegone”

   Synonymswoebegone

   Similarsorrowful
2. 2.

   of very poor quality or condition

   “deplorable housing conditions in the inner city”

   “woeful treatment of the accused”

   “woeful errors of judgment”

   Synonymsdeplorableexecrablemiserablewretched

   Similarinferior

Other forms of woeful

comparative

woefuller·

superlative

woefullest·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about woeful

What does woeful mean?

woeful means "affected by or full of grief or woe". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in woeful?

woeful has 2 syllables: woe-ful. The stress falls on "woe". In IPA it is /ˈwoʊfəl/.

What is another word for woeful?

Close synonyms include woebegone, deplorable, execrable, miserable, wretched. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is woeful a common word?

woeful is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.