Grief

How to spell grief

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce grief

What does grief mean?

1. nounDeep sorrow, especially that caused by someone's death or by a serious loss.
2. nounTrouble, annoyance, or difficulty, often given to or received from another person (informal).

Grief in a sentence

• The family was overwhelmed by grief after the funeral.

• The new software gave the whole team endless grief all month.

• Counselling helped her work through her grief at her own pace.

• She got a lot of grief from her neighbours about the parking.

Where does grief come from?

Language of origin: French

Grief came into English around the early 1200s from Old French grief, which meant a wrong, a grievance, or a hardship. That noun was formed from the verb grever, meaning to burden or to oppress, which traces back to the Latin gravare, to make heavy or weigh down. The ultimate source is the Latin adjective gravis, meaning heavy, weighty, or serious, the same root that gives us grave, gravity, and aggravate. In its earliest English use grief covered any kind of hardship or injury before it narrowed to the modern sense of deep mental anguish, especially the sorrow caused by loss or death. The spelling keeps the ie sequence that English inherited through French, and it obeys the familiar i before e after most consonants, which makes it a useful anchor for the trap.

How the word is built

• griev-/grev- (from grever: to burden)
• -f