Other forms: grieves
Grief is the deep heavy sadness that follows losing somebody you love. Overcome with grief, the first year of grief, grief counselling.
It is uncountable and it is specific to loss, which is what separates it from sadness. The verb is grieve, and to grieve for somebody is the standard phrasing. Note two idioms that use the word for something much lighter: give somebody grief means to make trouble for them, and good grief is a mild exclamation of surprise. And come to grief means to fail badly or have an accident, which is older and rather grimmer than it sounds.
1noungriefDeep sadness after losing somebody.
“She was still in the early stages of grief.”
synonyms: sorrow, mourning, bereavement
2nountroubleTrouble or annoyance, in informal use.
“I got a lot of grief about it at work.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
grief is a kind of sadness.
Also accepted in games: sorrow
Old French grief meant heavy or grievous, from Latin gravis, heavy — the same root as gravity, grave and aggravate. Grief is heaviness, and English has kept the weight in the word without anybody having to explain it.
Proto-Indo-European
*gʷreh₂-
Latin
gravis — heavy, grievous, sad
Old French
grief — grave, heavy, grievous, sad
Middle English
greef
English, today
grief
From Middle English greef, gref, from Old French grief (“grave, heavy, grievous, sad”), from Latin gravis (“heavy, grievous, sad”). a doublet of grave.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA