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

Woe betide the grounds passholder who shows up at the “wrong” entrance; you may be made to walk several blocks, though several on Monday attempted to argue with U.N. police.

From Seattle Times ● Sep. 19, 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

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

Soon her song is waken’d; “Woe! woe! woe betides us, Friend from friend divided, Bird from forest banish’d!”

From Servian Popular Poetry by John Bowring

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

Traffic with it, and you miss the real lift of life, that which makes life good, whatever betides.

From The Black Colonel by James Milne

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

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

This should have served to prefigure to me that my soul, once free and sovereign of itself, was on that day to lay aside its sovereignty and become a slave, as it betided.

From La Fiammetta by Giovanni Boccaccio

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

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 Black Arrow A Tale of the Two Roses by Robert Louis Stevenson

I will come anon and learn what is betiding.

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

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

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

O I know the Hand that is guiding me Through the shadow to the light; And I know that all betiding me Is meted out aright.

From Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul by James Mudge

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