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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

grieve.

To cause sorrow or distress to.

6 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

verb/ɡɹiːv/Received-Pronunciation, US
  1. To cause sorrow or distress to.

    transitive
  2. To feel very sad about; to mourn; to sorrow for.

    transitive
    to grieve one's fate
  3. To experience grief.

    intransitive
  4. To harm.

    archaic · transitive
  5. To submit or file a grievance (about).

    transitive
Where this word comes from

From Middle English greven, from Old French grever (“to burden”), from Latin gravō, gravāre, from adjective gravis (“grave”). For the meaning development compare Russian тяготи́ть (tjagotítʹ, “to be a burden (on), to oppress”), Russian тужи́ть (tužítʹ, “to experience grief”), related to тяжёлый (tjažólyj, “heavy, grave”), тя́жкий (tjážkij).

noun/ɡɹiːv/Received-Pronunciation, US
  1. A governor of a town or province.

    obsolete
  2. A manager or steward, e.g. of a farm.

    Scotland
Where this word comes from

From Middle English greve, greyve, grave, grafe, from Old Norse greifi, from Middle Low German grēve, grâve, related to Old English grœfa, groefa, variants of Old English ġerēfa (“steward, reeve”). More at reeve.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.