grief

The story

1. Latin · derived fromgravis“heavy, grievous, sad”
2. Old French · derived fromgrief“grave, heavy, grievous, sad”
3. Middle English · inherited fromgreef
4. English todaygrief

From Middle English greef, gref, from Old French grief (“grave, heavy, grievous, sad”), from Latin gravis (“heavy, grievous, sad”). Doublet of grave.

Words from the same roots

First known use, by meaning

• from early 13th c. Suffering, hardship.
• from early 14th c. Emotional pain, generally arising from misfortune, significant personal loss, bereavement, misconduct of oneself or others, etc.; sorrow; sadness.
• from late 1990s To deliberately harass and annoy or cause grief to other players of a game in order to interfere with their enjoyment of it; especially, to do this as one’s primary activity in the game, and especially by exploiting game mechanics without using cheats to do so, often through acts of destruction or vandalism.