Bereaved

Part of speech: adjective

Pronunciation: /bɪˈɹiːvd/

Definitions

1. One who has experienced the loss of a loved one due to death may be described as someone who has been left in a state of grief and mourning
2. A person who suffers from the absence of someone significant who has passed away can be referred to as having undergone bereavement
3. Those who have lost family members or close friends to death are often characterized as being in a state of sorrow and sadness

Etymology: "Bereaved" is the past form of "bereave," and the verb's original sense was far harsher than the grief it now describes. In Old English, "berēafian" meant to seize, rob, or despoil, the same kind of violent taking as plundering a village. The prefix "be-" intensifies the root "reave," which also meant to snatch or carry off, so the verb was essentially "to rob thoroughly." Over the centuries the object of that robbery shifted. Medieval writers could be bereaved of land, goods, or life itself, and the sense of being stripped of something precious gradually narrowed to the loss of a person. The modern emotional meaning grew from that idea: a bereaved person has had someone taken away, left with a gap where a companion used to be. The same root appears across the Germanic languages. Dutch "beroven," German "berauben," and Swedish "beröva" all still carry the meaning of robbing or depriving, so the word's modern grief is the only sense that has been softened into something gentle.

Synonyms: grieving, mourning, sorrowful

Antonyms: rejoicing, celebrating, happy