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bereft

UK/bəˈɹɛft/US/bəˈɹɛft/
adjectiveC2Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #11,941 of 15,258neutral

Bereft means left completely without something valued. Bereft of ideas, utterly bereft, bereft of comfort.

It takes of and belongs to abstract losses, so somebody is bereft of hope rather than of a wallet. Alone it means desolate with grief, and it is the old past participle of bereave, kept for exactly this use.

Definitions of bereft

  1. 1adjectivebereftLeft completely without something valued.C2

    “After his wife died, he was bereft of any reason to get up in the morning.”

bereft is a state.

Remember it

beREFT → LEFT with nothing

Left with nothing at all, and the empty room says so.

hooks ontoleft

Where it comes from

Middle English bireft is the past participle of bereave, from Old English bereafian, to rob or deprive.

  1. Middle English

    bireft

  2. English, today

    bereft

From Middle English bireft, v. Middle English bireven. Synchronically a form of bereaved; compare leave and left.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

bereft in the wild

  • A reaction shot is also generally bereft of dialogue, though this is not an absolute rule.

    Reaction shot

  • The French government turned over the administration of Mauritius to the French East India Company, but the island remained bereft of Europeans until 1721.

    Governor of Isle de France (Mauritius)

  • Very little is known of his biography, with his parliamentary biography bereft of the usual details.

    William Fergusson (politician)

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.