alas [ME] This expression of dismay is from Old French a las, a lasse, from a ‘ah’ and las(se) ‘miserable, weary’, from Latin lassus ‘weary’. Late Middle English alack is a comparable exclamation, from a ‘ah!’ and lak ‘lack’. It originally expressed dissatisfaction and the notion ‘shame that it should be the case’; this came to convey regret or surprise, as in alack-a-day [M16th] or lackaday [L17th], where the central ‘a’ is a reduced form of ‘the’.