woe is me

Mane (Îngilîzî)

Used to show that the speaker feels distress or misery.

Hevwate

woe

oh no

ah

Werger

οίμοι

o weh

weh mir

ai de mim

ay de mí

Wekî (IPA) tê bilêvkirin

/ˌwəʊ ɪz ˈmiː/

Etîmolojî (Îngilîzî)

Hevwate bi almanî: Weh ist mir

Hevwate bi yidîşî: וויי איז מיר

In summary

Here, the oblique pronoun me denotes not an informal copulative complement (as in this is me), but an indirect object, wherefore it literally means woe is to me, an obsolete way of saying I feel woe; compare German mir ist traurig (“I feel sad”, literally “to-me [it] is sad”). Idiomatically, it means woe is upon me. See also German weh ist mir and its descendant, Yiddish וויי איז מיר (vey iz mir), which are identical in form and meaning to the English expression.