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

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

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 23, 2024

"Woe betide you if you were a preacher and you misquoted," Lord Sentamu says.

From BBC ● Sep. 17, 2022

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

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

From Endymion A Poetic Romance by John Keats

Whatever betides, whatever new ties you may form, whatever changes may come between us, I shall always look to you, and love you, as I do now, and have always done.

From David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

Vain is his force:—our holy sanctuary, Whate'er betides, shall give your virtue shelter; And peace, and piety, alone, approach you.

From The Count of Narbonne A Tragedy, in Five Acts by Robert Jephson

By Allah, O my lord, excuse me; I have told thee the truth of my case and the accident which betided me.

From Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 2 by Hamilton Wright Mabie

"O Fakir," answered the other, "verily a matter of marvel hath betided me and I know not how to act therein."

From The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night — Volume 15 by Sir Richard Francis Burton

Whatever betided, there was but one woman in the world for him.

From Woven with the Ship A Novel of 1865 by Cyrus Townsend Brady

And again he held him silent of bitter words or of sweet; And quoth Sigmund, "What hath betided? is an adder in the meat?"

From The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs by William Morris

He sprinkled water on his face and when he revived, he said to him, 'What has betided thee?

From The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Volume IV by John Payne

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

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

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

From The Grammar of English Grammars by Goold Brown

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 Virna Sheard

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