Basic+ Word of the Day: grief

grief (noun)

Grief is deep sorrow or painful regret.

• Terry felt intense grief when her father died suddenly.
• Bob's grief over his divorce was due to his feeling of guilt.
• Marissa was filled with grief when her youngest child left for college.

Grief is also trouble or annoyance.

• Taylor gave her father grief every time he asked her to clean her room.

Common uses

good grief: expression showing surprise. Example: “Good grief! Who ate all the cookies?”

Did you know?

Although we think of grief as a sharp pain, it takes a long time to recover from such an experience. The process of recovery has been described as the five stages of grief. Read Wikipedia’s explanation of it here.

In pop culture

Listen to Sinead O’Connor sing this sad ballad, “Tiny Grief Song.”

There are other meanings of grief.