betide

Woe betide the philistine who requests a salt shaker or asks that a meticulously prepared dish be spice-bombed.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 23, 2026

Woe betide anyone who didn't meet Amorim's standards.

From BBC ● Aug. 4, 2025

A certain life was expected for you, and woe betide you if you went outside of that.

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 23, 2024

But woe betide anyone who tried to give her out-of-season berries.

From Seattle Times ● Aug. 21, 2022

Nay, nay, whatever may now betide in war, my line too is ending, even the House of the Stewards has failed.

From "The Return of the King" by J.R.R. Tolkien

But I have to wonder if, whatever betides, I can stay upbeat in spirit.

From The New Yorker ● Dec. 16, 2019

It fails to mention Ogden Nash's "One rule which woe betides the banker who fails to heed it,/ Which is you must never lend any money to anybody unless they don't need it."

From Time Magazine Archive

"To us," cries Beowulf in his last fight, "to us it shall be as our Weird betides, that Weird that is every man's lord!"

From History of the English People, Volume I Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 by Green, John Richard

Now woe to the warder, poor sinner, betides!

From Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 by Various

Let it content thee, Sister, seeing me More happy than betides mortality.

From Endymion A Poetic Romance by Keats, John

Mother, that you are mov'd, this makes me wonder; When I departed, I did leave ye friends: What undigested jar hath since betided?

From A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 7 by Various

These were anchored a hundred yards from shore, and Brian saw the danger that betided as the stream of fugitives swept down toward the boats.

From Nuala O'Malley by Bedford-Jones, H.

Such doom, of old, that youth betided,   Who wooed, he thought, some angel's charms, But found a cloud that from him glided,—   As thou dost from these outstretched arms.

From The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore Collected by Himself with Explanatory Notes by Rossetti, William Michael

Now paupers got sick and got well as Nature pleased: but woe betided the rich in an age when, for one Mr. Malady killed, three fell by Dr. Remedy.

From The Cloister and the Hearth A Tale of the Middle Ages by Reade, Charles

But, that you may more manifestly apprehend how this betided me, I will briefly declare it to you.'

From The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio by Payne, John

The death of my son betiding while my soul was under this anxiety, I thought of nothing but resigning my dominions, and retiring for ever from the sight of mankind.

From Shorter Novels, Eighteenth Century The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia; The Castle of Otranto, a Gothic Story; Vathek, an Arabian Tale by Beckford, William

I will come anon and learn what is betiding.

From The Sign of the Red Cross by Everett-Green, Evelyn

There was an Ark with scrolls of the Law in the room, betiding a piety and a purse beyond the normal.

From Ghetto Comedies by Zangwill, Israel

For prairie and mountain, windswept and high, For betiding beauty of earth and sky— Say a benediction e'er you pass by.

From The Miracle and Other Poems by Sheard, Virna

Betide, betided or betid, betiding, betided or betid.

From The Grammar of English Grammars by Brown, Goold