{"id":353,"date":"2018-01-26T00:11:52","date_gmt":"2018-01-26T00:11:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/answerwall.domain.bc.edu\/?p=353"},"modified":"2018-01-26T20:17:00","modified_gmt":"2018-01-26T20:17:00","slug":"who-in-all-of-history-has-most-acutely-felt-woe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/library.bc.edu\/answerwall\/2018\/01\/26\/who-in-all-of-history-has-most-acutely-felt-woe\/","title":{"rendered":"Who in all of history has most acutely felt Woe?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Who<\/a>
Who in all of history has most acutely felt Woe?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I often turn to the OED when I’m curious about the history of a word like “woe” (bit.ly\/OED-woe – sign-in required). It’s quite an old word, dating at least back to bronze age proto-Iranian, and appears independently in non-Indo-European languages as well, suggesting its derivation is onomatopoetic, that is, it’s based on the sound of human expressions of sadness & grief. The Yiddish form (“Weh,” as in “Oy Weh!”) probably has more currency now than the English “Woe,” which is a little archaic. In recent history, Jews have good reason to be standouts in acute woe, and yet they’re also standouts in expressions of humor. It’s a mystery. Unfortunately, humankind seems to distribute woe generously, so there is no one group or person who can claim to be the most woeful in all of history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I often turn to the OED when I’m curious about the history of a word like “woe” (bit.ly\/OED-woe – sign-in required). It’s quite an old word, dating at least back to bronze age proto-Iranian, and appears independently in non-Indo-European languages as well, suggesting its derivation is onomatopoetic, that is, it’s based on the sound of … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Who in all of history has most acutely felt Woe?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[63,64],"class_list":["post-353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-questions","tag-history","tag-suffering"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.bc.edu\/answerwall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.bc.edu\/answerwall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.bc.edu\/answerwall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.bc.edu\/answerwall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.bc.edu\/answerwall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/library.bc.edu\/answerwall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":401,"href":"https:\/\/library.bc.edu\/answerwall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353\/revisions\/401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.bc.edu\/answerwall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.bc.edu\/answerwall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.bc.edu\/answerwall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}