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

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

Whate'er betides, all beauty still is mine,     I drink—as did the old gods—of its wine!

From The Ballad of the Quest by Virna Sheard

"Save thee, father! peril betides him who would hazard a message to my lady without her husband's leave."

From Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 by John Roby

Trim, I fear nothing, he would say, but the doing a wrong thing.——Well, he would add, whatever betides, I will take care of Le Fever’s boy.—And with that, like a quieting draught, his honour would fall asleep.

From The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne

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

They were not apprized of any inconvenience or danger that betided her.

From Ormond, Volume III (of 3) or, The Secret Witness by Charles Brockden Brown

He told them what had betided him and themseemed, by the host's counsel, that he were best depart Naples incontinent.

From The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio by John Payne

But first Ile tel you what betided me after I was brought to Doctour Zacharies.

From The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse by Edmund Gosse

Hard by the bridge there was a stone cross upon a knoll, and here the group had collected—half a dozen women and one tall fellow in a russet smock—discussing what the bell betided.

From The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) by Robert Louis Stevenson

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

From The Grammar of English Grammars by Goold Brown

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

Then spake the Carline: "I must now look along the ways of sleep and see what is betiding."

From The Sundering Flood by May Morris

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 William Beckford

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