Woe vs Roe - What's the difference?
woe | roe |
grief; sorrow; misery; heavy calamity.
* Milton
* Alexander Pope
A curse; a malediction.
* South
(obsolete) woeful; sorrowful
* Robert of Brunne
* Chaucer
* Spenser
The eggs of fish.
The sperm of certain fish.
The ovaries of certain crustaceans.
A small, nimble Eurasian deer, Capreolus capreolus , with no visible tail, a white rump patch, and a reddish summer coat that turns grey in winter, the male having short three-pointed antlers.
A mottled appearance of light and shade in wood, especially in mahogany.
As nouns the difference between woe and roe
is that woe is grief; sorrow; misery; heavy calamity while roe is a withe or rope or roe can be flat or level ground.As an adjective woe
is (obsolete) woeful; sorrowful.woe
English
Noun
(en noun)- Thus saying, from her side the fatal key, / Sad instrument of all our woe , she took.
- [They] weep each other's woe .
- 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 meAdjective
(en adjective)- His clerk was woe to do that deed.
- Woe was this knight and sorrowfully he sighed.
- And looking up he waxed wondrous woe .