Foe vs Woe - What's the difference?
foe | woe |
(obsolete) Hostile.
*, vol.1, ch.23:
An enemy.
* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-29, volume=407, issue=8842, page=55, magazine=(The Economist)
, title= grief; sorrow; misery; heavy calamity.
* Milton
* Alexander Pope
A curse; a malediction.
* South
(obsolete) woeful; sorrowful
* Robert of Brunne
* Chaucer
* Spenser
In obsolete terms the difference between foe and woe
is that foe is hostile while woe is woeful; sorrowful.As an initialism FoE
is friends of the Earth.foe
English
Etymology 1
(etyl) fo 'foe; hostile', from earlier ifo 'foe', from (etyl) 'to hate, be hostile' (compare Middle Irish oech 'enemy, fiend', Latin piget 'he is annoying', Lithuanian piktas ‘evil’, Albanian pis ‘dirty, scoundrel’).Adjective
(en adjective)- he, I say, could passe into Affrike onely with two simple ships or small barkes, to commit himselfe in a strange and foe countrie, to engage his person, under the power of a barbarous King.
Noun
(en noun)Travels and travails, passage=Even without hovering drones, a lurking assassin, a thumping score and a denouement, the real-life story of Edward Snowden, a rogue spy on the run, could be straight out of the cinema. But, as with Hollywood, the subplots and exotic locations may distract from the real message: America’s discomfort and its foe s’ glee.}}
Synonyms
* (enemy) adversary, enemy, opponentAntonyms
* (enemy) ally, friendEtymology 2
An acronym of "fifty-one ergs", coined by Gerald Brown of Stony Brook University in his work with Hans Bethe.Anagrams
*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 .