# grief

Pronunciation: US say "GREEF" /ɡɹiːf/; UK

## Noun

1. Deep emotional pain arising from loss, misfortune, or wrongdoing; sorrow or sadness.
   - Simple: Deep sadness that comes from losing someone or something you love.
   - _The widow's grief slowly eased as the years passed._
   - _Survivors of the disaster carried a shared grief for decades._
2. A cause or instance of sorrow or pain; something that afflicts or distresses a person, a trial.
   - Simple: Something that causes pain or sadness, a hardship you have to bear.
   - _The failed harvest was the greatest grief the village faced that year._
   - _She bore each of her griefs quietly, never asking for sympathy._
3. Suffering or hardship that someone has to endure.
   - Simple: Suffering or hard times that a person has to go through.
   - _They endured years of grief before their fortunes finally turned._
   - _Getting the permits approved caused us no end of grief._

## Verb

4. To deliberately harass other players in an online game to spoil their enjoyment, often by exploiting game features to destroy or vandalize.
   - Simple: To annoy and ruin the game for other players on purpose.
   - _A few users logged on only to grief the server, smashing everyone's builds._
   - _They reported a player who kept griefing the lobby all evening._

## Origin

From Middle English greef, from Old French grief ('grave, heavy, grievous, sad'), from Latin gravis ('heavy, grievous, sad'). It is a doublet of grave.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/grief (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).