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

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

From Seattle Times ● Aug. 21, 2022

Woe betide the civic leader in a company town who threatens to buck the company’s interests.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 4, 2022

Woe betide the plant whose genetic program is mismatched to the latitude of the field in which it is planted!

From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond

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

Not content with making his tombstone a weapon of destruction to us, he pays the Abbey itself an occasional visit, and his appearance always betides some disaster to the family.

From The Lancashire Witches A Romance of Pendle Forest by William Harrison Ainsworth

When this odd gesture betides them, they are scratching themselves with one foot, and thus lose the center of gravity.

From School Reading by Grades Sixth Year by James Baldwin

It is a strange thing, and men often say it betides ill; but I have no knowledge of mine own.

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

And when they had rested and were cheered, Ja'afar said, "Do thou acquaint me with all that betided thee from the time we took leave each of other until this day and date."

From The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night — Volume 16 by Sir Richard Francis Burton

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

From The Grammar of English Grammars by Goold Brown

They bade Rose remain in the garden for the next few hours, and they would hide in a clump of bushes at the corner and watch what betided.

From Tom Tufton's Travels by Evelyn Everett-Green

Then she fell to relating all that had betided her from the very beginning to that which hath before been described; and when her father heard it he felt assured that she was his daughter.

From The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night — Volume 14 by Sir Richard Francis Burton

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 Charles Reade

Doth she lead her hither To the wind and sun?—Ah, fain would I know What strange betiding hath blanched that brow   And made that young life wither.

From Hippolytus/The Bacchae by Euripides

I will come anon and learn what is betiding.

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

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

From The Grammar of English Grammars by Goold Brown

With no thought of ill betiding, "Thus," we said, "life's years shall be For us twain a river gliding To a calm, eternal sea."

From The Argosy Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 by Charles W. Wood

And hence their quiet looks confiding,        Hence grateful instincts seated deep,      By whose strong bond, were ill betiding,        They'd risk their own his life to keep.

From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 06, No. 38, December, 1860 by Various