woeful

• POS: Adjective
• HYPHEN: woe=ful

CIDE DICTIONARY

woeful, a. 

•  Full of woe; sorrowful; distressed with grief or calamity; afflicted; wretched; unhappy; sad.  [1913 Webster]

  "How many woeful widows left to bow
  To sad disgrace!"  [1913 Webster]
•  Bringing calamity, distress, or affliction; as, a woeful event; woeful want.  [1913 Webster]

  "O woeful day! O day of woe!"  [1913 Webster]
•  Wretched; paltry; miserable; poor.  [1913 Webster]

  "What woeful stuff this madrigal would be!"  [1913 Webster]

OXFORD DICTIONARY

woeful, adj.
1 sorrowful; afflicted with distress (a woeful expression).
2 causing sorrow or affliction.
3 very bad; wretched (woeful ignorance).

Derivative

woefully adv. woefulness n.

THESAURUS

woeful

abominable, affecting, afflictive, aggrieved, anguished, arrant, atrocious, awful, base, beastly, beneath contempt, bitter, blameworthy, bleak, brutal, calamitous, careworn, cheerless, comfortless, contemptible, crushed, cut up, deep-troubled, dejected, deplorable, depressed, depressing, depressive, desolate, despicable, detestable, dire, discomforting, disconsolate, disgusting, dismal, dismaying, dispirited, distressful, distressing, doleful, dolorific, dolorogenic, dolorous, downcast, downhearted, dreadful, dreary, dumb with grief, egregious, enormous, fetid, filthy, flagrant, foul, fulsome, grave, grief-stricken, griefful, grieved, grievous, gross, harrowed, hateful, heart-stricken, heart-struck, heartbreaking, heartsick, heinous, horrible, horrid, in grief, in the dumps, inconsolable, infamous, joyless, lamentable, loathsome, lousy, low-spirited, lugubrious, miserable, monstrous, mournful, moving, nasty, nefarious, noisome, notorious, obnoxious, odious, offensive, on the rack, outrageous, overcome, painful, pathetic, piteous, pitiable, pitiful, plaintive, plangent, plunged in grief, poignant, racked, rank, regrettable, reprehensible, repulsive, rotten, rueful, ruthful, sad, saddening, scandalous, schlock, scurvy, shabby, shameful, sharp, shocking, shoddy, sordid, sore, sorrowed, sorrowful, sorrowing, squalid, stricken, suicidal, tearful, terrible, too bad, tortured, touching, unclean, uncomfortable, unfortunate, unprecedented, vile, villainous, woebegone, worst, worthless, wretched, wrung

ROGET THESAURUS

woeful

Badness

N badness, hurtfulness, virulence, evil doer, bane, plague spot, evil star, ill wind, hoodoo, Jonah, snake in the grass, skeleton in the closet, amari aliquid, thorn in the side, malignity, malevolence, tender mercies, ill-treatment, annoyance, molestation, abuse, oppression, persecution, outrage, misusage, injury, knockout drops, badness, peccancy, abomination, painfulness, pestilence, guilt, depravity, hurtful, harmful, scathful, baneful, baleful, injurious, deleterious, detrimental, noxious, pernicious, mischievous, full of mischief, mischief-making, malefic, malignant, nocuous, noisome, prejudicial, disserviceable, disadvantageous, wide-wasting, unlucky, sinister, obnoxious, untoward, disastrous, oppressive, burdensome, onerous, malign, corrupting &c (corrupt), virulent, venomous, envenomed, corrosive, poisonous, deadly, destructive, inauspicious, bad, ill, arrant, as bad as bad can be, dreadful, horrid, horrible, dire, rank, peccant, foul, fulsome, rotten, rotten at the core, vile, base, villainous, mean, injured, deteriorated, unsatisfactory, exceptionable indifferent, below par, illcontrived, ill-conditioned, wretched, sad, grievous, deplorable, lamentable, pitiful, pitiable, woeful, evil, wrong, depraved, shocking, reprehensible, hateful, hateful as a toad, abominable, detestable, execrable, cursed, accursed, confounded, damned, damnable, infernal, diabolic, unadvisable, unprofitable, incompetent, irremediable, badly, wrong, ill, to one's cost, where the shoe pinches, bad is the best: the worst come to the worst, herba mala presto cresco, wrongs unredressed or insults unavenged.

Painfulness

N painfulness, trouble, care, trial, affliction, infliction, blow, stroke, burden, load, curse, bitter pill, bitter draught, waters of bitterness, annoyance, grievance, nuisance, vexation, mortification, sickener, bore, bother, pother, hot water, sea of troubles, hornet's nest, plague, pest, cancer, ulcer, sting, thorn, canker, scorpion, dagger, scourge, carking care, canker worm of care, mishap, misfortune, desagrement, esclandre, rub, source of irritation, source of annoyance, wound, open sore, sore subject, skeleton in the closet, thorn in the flesh, thorn in one's side, where the shoe pinches, gall and wormwood, sorry sight, heavy news, provocation, affront, head and front of one's offending, infestation, molestation, malignity, causing pain, hurting, hurtful, painful, dolorific, dolorous, unpleasant, unpleasing, displeasing, disagreeable, unpalatable, bitter, distasteful, uninviting, unwelcome, undesirable, undesired, obnoxious, unacceptable, unpopular, thankless, unsatisfactory, untoward, unlucky, uncomfortable, distressing, afflicting, afflictive, joyless, cheerless, comfortless, dismal, disheartening, depressing, depressive, dreary, melancholy, grievous, piteous, woeful, rueful, mournful, deplorable, pitiable, lamentable, sad, affecting, touching, pathetic, irritating, provoking, stinging, annoying, aggravating, mortifying, galling, unaccommodating, invidious, vexatious, troublesome, tiresome, irksome, wearisome, plaguing, plaguy, awkward, importunate, teasing, pestering, bothering, harassing, worrying, tormenting, carking, intolerable, insufferable, insupportable, unbearable, unendurable, past bearing, not to be borne, not to be endured, more than flesh and blood can bear, enough to drive one mad, enough to provoke a saint, enough to make a parson swear, enough to gag a maggot, shocking, terrific, grim, appalling, crushing, dreadful, fearful, frightful, thrilling, tremendous, dire, heart-breaking, heart-rending, heart-wounding, heart-corroding, heart-sickening, harrowing, rending, odious, hateful, execrable, repulsive, repellent, abhorrent, horrid, horrible, horrific, horrifying, offensive, nauseous, nauseating, disgusting, sickening, revolting, nasty, loathsome, loathful, fulsome, vile, hideous, sharp, acute, sore, severe, grave, hard, harsh, cruel, biting, caustic, cutting, corroding, consuming, racking, excruciating, searching, grinding, grating, agonizing, envenomed, catheretic, pyrotic, ruinous, disastrous, calamitous, tragical, desolating, withering, burdensome, onerous, oppressive, cumbrous, cumbersome, painfully, with pain, deuced, Int, hinc illae lachrymae!, surgit amari aliquid, the place being too hot to hold one, the iron entering into the soul, he jests at scars that never felt a wound, I must be cruel only to be kind, what deep wounds ever closed without a scar?.