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Woe vs Melancholic - What's the difference?

woe | melancholic |

As nouns the difference between woe and melancholic

is that woe is grief; sorrow; misery; heavy calamity while melancholic is a person who is habitually melancholy.

As adjectives the difference between woe and melancholic

is that woe is (obsolete) woeful; sorrowful while melancholic is filled with or affected by melancholy—great sadness or depression, especially of a thoughtful or introspective nature.

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

    *

    melancholic

    English

    Alternative forms

    * melancholick (obsolete)

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Filled with or affected by melancholy—great sadness or depression, especially of a thoughtful or introspective nature.
  • * Prior
    • Just as the melancholic eye / Sees fleets and armies in the sky.

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A person who is habitually melancholy.
  • * {{quote-news, year=2008, date=March 16, author=Garrison Keillor, title=Woe Be Gone, work=New York Times citation
    • , passage=Kafka, Hart Crane, Jackson Pollock , Tennessee Williams , Mark Rothko , melancholics all, so why shouldn’t we accept our own bleakness and take long walks in the winter woods and look at the gnarled limbs of trees and struggle with the inscrutable and accept the beauty of permanent turmoil? }}