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 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

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

I am glad you came to see me; and, whatever betides," he continued, huskily, "I hope you will think none the worse of me.

From Kidnapped at the Altar or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain by Laura Jean Libbey

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

Mine are to stand firm, whatever betides, and guard the women!

From The Abbess Of Vlaye by Stanley J. Weyman

At this the Khalif laughed and summoning the Cadi and the witnesses, renewed the marriage-contract between Dunya and her husband, whereby there betided them the utmost of felicity and those who envied them were mortified.

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

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

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

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

From The Grammar of English Grammars by Goold Brown

Whusky an' he were man an' may Whate'er betided.

From New Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson

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

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

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

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