grieve

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English greven,^[2][3][4] borrowed from Old French grever (“to burden, oppress, afflict”),^{[5][3][6][7][8]} which the Anglo-Norman Dictionary records from the mid-12th century with the senses to damage, to upset, to hurt and to torment.^[9] The French verb goes back to Vulgar Latin *grevō,^[5][10] an alteration of Latin gravō (“to weigh down, burden, oppress”),^[5][8][7] from gravis (“heavy”), the source of grave.^[3][4][11] Weekley explains the vowel as due to the influence of levis (“light”), the opposite of gravis.^[10] The Latin adjective is from Proto-Indo-European *gwere- (“heavy”),^[6][3] and Merriam-Webster names as cognates Gothic 𐌺𐌰𐌿𐍂𐌾𐌰𐌽 (kaurjan, “to weigh upon”) and the Greek and Sanskrit words for heavy.^[4] English took the verb from the stressed stem of the French verb.^[6][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

To cause bodily pain or discomfort, and to vex or afflict the mind: both senses are first recorded in the Ancrene Riwle, of about 1225.^[5] Etymonline dates the verb to about 1200, as "to make worried or depressed" and "to make angry".^[6]

Semantic evolution

Like the Latin verb, which could mean both "make heavy" and "cause grief",^[6] the Middle English verb covered a wide range: to burden, to harass and oppress, to injure bodily or damage a thing, to cause pain, and to make angry.^[5][2][8] Chaucer used it 41 times and Gower 61 times, for "grieve", "injure" and "anger".^[12] The senses of harm and anger died out between the 16th and early 19th centuries,^[5][8][13] and the sense of causing sorrow was left.^[5][8] The intransitive use, to feel grief, appears about 1400,^[6][13] and the transitive "to feel grief for" from the late 16th century, chiefly in poetry.^[13][8] Johnson (1755) still defined the transitive verb as "to afflict; to hurt".^[14] In the United States and Canada the verb has also come to mean to submit a formal grievance about something.^[4]

Timeline

• c. 1225 – to cause bodily pain; to vex or afflict mentally, later to cause deep sorrow.^[5][13] Etymonline dates the verb to about 1200.^[6]
• 1297 – to harass, oppress or harm (obsolete by 1651).^[5][13]
• 1340 – to burden, weigh upon (obsolete).^[5]
• 1362 – to make angry (obsolete by 1535).^[5][13]
• 1390 – to do bodily harm to; to damage (obsolete by 1810).^[5][13]
• c. 1400 – intransitive, to feel grief, to sorrow deeply.^[13][6]
• 1597 – transitive, to feel or show grief for.^[13]

Meanings

Verb

1. To feel deep sorrow, especially at someone's death; to mourn: The whole village grieved for the drowned fishermen.^[15][4][8]
2. To cause grief or distress to: His long silence grieved his mother.^[15][4][8]
3. To feel or show grief over something: She grieved the loss of her childhood home.^[4][8]
4. (US, Canada) To submit a formal grievance about something: The union grieved the firing.^[4]
5. (obsolete, 1297–1651) To harm, injure or oppress.^[5][8][15]
6. (obsolete, 1362–1535) To make angry; to offend.^[5][8][4]
7. (obsolete) To weigh or press heavily on; to burden.^[5][4]

Word family

• griever
• grievingly
• overgrieve
• ungrieving

Related words

• grief
• grievance
• grievous
• aggrieve
• grave
• gravity
• aggravate

Usage notes

The Scots and northern English noun grieve, the overseer or manager of a farm, has a separate source: it continues Old English grœ̄fa, the Northumbrian form of ġerēfa, the source of reeve.^[5][8][4] It is recorded from 1513, and was still in dialect use in Scotland, Northumberland, Cumberland and Yorkshire in the 19th century.^[5][16]

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ a b c d The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
10. ^ a b c Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
11. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ Benson, Larry D., Glossarial Concordance to Middle English (Chaucer, Gower), Johns Hopkins University, github.com/jhu-digital-manuscripts/gcme
13. ^ a b c d e f g h i Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)
14. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
15. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
16. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)