Meanings
comparative more wailful · superlative most wailful
- poeticSorrowful; mournful.
Farre better I it deeme to die with speed / Then waste in woe and waylfull miserye […]
1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto IV”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC1 more example
You must lay Lime, to tangle her desires / By walefull Sonnets, whose composed Rimes / Should be full fraught with seruiceable vowes.
c. 1590–1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Two Gentlemen of Verona”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, (please specify the act number in uppercase Roman numerals, and the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals)
Synonyms & antonyms
adjectivevocally expressing grief or sorrow or resembling such expression
Synonym sets from Open English WordNet, CC BY 4.0.
Origin
Rhymes & wordplay
Anagrams
Cite this entry
wailful. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/wailful
“wailful.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/wailful. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “wailful,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/wailful.
Source: wailful on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.