What's the difference between
and
Enter two words to compare and contrast their definitions, origins, and synonyms to better understand how those words are related.

Mirth vs Woe - What's the difference?

mirth | woe |

As nouns the difference between mirth and woe

is that mirth is the emotion usually following humour and accompanied by laughter; merriment; jollity; gaiety while woe is grief; sorrow; misery; heavy calamity.

As an adjective woe is

(obsolete) woeful; sorrowful.

mirth

English

Noun

(en noun)
  • The emotion usually following humour and accompanied by laughter; merriment; jollity; gaiety.
  • * 1883 ,
  • And he began to laugh again, and that so heartily, that, though I did not see the joke as he did, I was again obliged to join him in his mirth.
  • *, title=The Mirror and the Lamp
  • , chapter=2 citation , passage=She was a fat, round little woman, richly apparelled in velvet and lace, […]; and the way she laughed, cackling like a hen, the way she talked to the waiters and the maid, […]—all these unexpected phenomena impelled one to hysterical mirth , and made one class her with such immortally ludicrous types as Ally Sloper, the Widow Twankey, or Miss Moucher.}}
  • * 1912 , :
  • Their eyes met and they began to laugh. They laughed as children do when they cannot contain themselves, and can not explain the cause of their mirth to grown people, but share it perfectly together.
  • That which causes merriment.
  • * 1922 ,
  • Phantasmal mirth , folded away: muskperfumed.

    Synonyms

    * (emotion) delight, glee, hilarity, jollity

    Antonyms

    * (emotion) sadness, gloom

    Derived terms

    * mirthful * mirthfulness * mirthless * mirthlessly * mirthlessness

    woe

    English

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • grief; sorrow; misery; heavy calamity.
  • * Milton
  • Thus saying, from her side the fatal key, / Sad instrument of all our woe , she took.
  • * Alexander Pope
  • [They] weep each other's woe .
  • A curse; a malediction.
  • * South
  • Can there be a woe or curse in all the stores of vengeance equal to the malignity of such a practice?

    Derived terms

    * in weal or woe * woeful * woe is me

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • (obsolete) woeful; sorrowful
  • * Robert of Brunne
  • His clerk was woe to do that deed.
  • * Chaucer
  • Woe was this knight and sorrowfully he sighed.
  • * Spenser
  • And looking up he waxed wondrous woe .

    Anagrams

    *