Definition of "woeful"

woeful

/ˈwəʊfəl/

adjective
comparative woefuller, superlative woefullest
1. Full of woe; sorrowful; distressed with grief or calamity.
  Quotations
  How many woeful widows left to bow / To sad disgrace!
  1595, Samuel Daniel, “(please specify the folio number)”, in The First Fowre Bookes of the Ciuile Wars between the Two Houses of Lancaster and Yorke, London: […] P[eter] Short for Simon Waterson
2. Bringing calamity, distress, or affliction.
3. Lamentable, deplorable.
  Quotations
  Thou seest we are not all alone unhappy:This wide and universal theatrePresents more woeful pageants than the sceneWherein we play in.
  c. 1598–1600 (date written), William Shakespeare, “As You Like It”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act II, scene vii], lines 1033-36
4. Wretched; paltry; poor.
  Quotations
  What woful stuff this madrigal would be / In some starv'd hackney sonneteer or me!
  1711, Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism; republished in The Complete Poetical Works of Alexander Pope, Boston, New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1902, page 72

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