wroth

From Middle English wroth, wrooth, from Old English wrāþ, from Proto-Germanic *wraiþaz (“cruel”), from Proto-Indo-European *wreyt- (“to turn”). Akin to Saterland Frisian wreed (“haughty; proud”), Old Saxon wrēd (“evil”) (Dutch wreed (“cruel”)), Old High German reid (“cruel”), Old Norse reiðr (“angry”) (Danish vred, Swedish vred).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ɹɒθ/, /ɹəʊθ/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ɹɔθ/, /ɹɑθ/

• Audio (US)

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  (without ɑ-ɔ merger)

• Audio (US)

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  (with ɑ-ɔ merger) (cot–caught merger)

wroth (comparative more wroth, superlative most wroth)

1. Full of anger; wrathful.
   • 1387–1400, Geoffrey Chaucer, “The Wyfe of Bathes Prologue”, in The Canterbury Tales, [Westminster: William Caxton, published 1478], OCLC 230972125; republished in [William Thynne], editor, The Workes of Geffray Chaucer Newlye Printed, […], [London]: Printed by [Richard Grafton for] Iohn Reynes […], 1542, OCLC 932884868, folio xxxvii, recto:

     So that the clerkes be nat with me wroth / I ſaye that they were maked for bothe / This is to ſeyn, for offyce and for ease / Of engendrure, there we nat god diſpleaſe

     So that the clerks be not with me wrathful / I say that they [genitals] were made for both / This is to say, for duty and for ease / Of reproduction, that we not God displease

   • 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), imprinted at London: By Robert Barker, […], OCLC 964384981, Genesis 4:5:

     But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell.

   • 1793, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Christabel

     And to be wroth with one we love,

     Doth work like madness in the brain.

   • 1883, Howard Pyle, The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood Chapter V

     But in the meantime Robin Hood and his band lived quietly in Sherwood Forest, without showing their faces abroad, for Robin knew that it would not be wise for him to be seen in the neighborhood of Nottingham, those in authority being very wroth with him.

   • 1936, Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People, Part 3, Chapter 4

     Business men are learning that it pays to be friendly to strikers. For example, when two thousand five hundred employees in the White Motor Company's plant struck for higher wages and a union shop, Robert F. Black, the president, didn't wax wroth and condemn, and threaten and talk of tyranny and Communists. He actually praised the strikers. He published an advertisement in the Cleveland papers, complimenting them on "the peaceful way in which they laid down their tools."

• wrath

• wroth in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• wroth in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.

• -worth, Worth, throw, whort, worth