betide

And woe betide you if you haven’t prepared as well as she has.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 20, 2026

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

Etymologically, “invective” is a cavalry charge, and when Cicero hit a gallop, woe betide whoever was in the way.

From "Words Like Loaded Pistols" by Sam Leith

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

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

Generations may not see it; but woe betides the States implicated in this oppression, when that day shall dawn; and the longer it tarries the greater the woe.

From Three Prize Essays on American Slavery by A.C. Baldwin

"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 John Richard Green

Now it betided,   Heaven's gate being partly open, that there glided A fair dream forth, and hovered o'er his sleep.

From Poems by Victor Hugo

Betide, p.t. betided; p.p. betid; to happen, come to pass, e.g.

From The Story of Sigurd the Volsung by Winifred Turner

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 William Michael Rossetti

But she always took the side of right and virtue against wrong and vice, and woe betided the luckless wight who fell under the ban of her just displeasure.

From Ben Burton Born and Bred at Sea by Archibald Webb

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

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 Israel Zangwill

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

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

I will come anon and learn what is betiding.

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