Kenneth G. Wilson (1923–). The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. 1993.
bereave (v.)
The past tense and past participle are bereaved or bereft. The verb means “to take away, to rob (of),” and most uses are archaic and stiffly formal: He was bereaved of all reason. Her tragedy bereaved her of all interest in life. Far more frequent are the two participial adjectives and the noun formed by one of them. Bereft has the more generalized meaning, “stripped of, robbed of, deprived of”: He was bereft of friends, money, and purpose. Bereaved, as adjective, is more specialized, referring to those who have lost a relative or friend to death: The bereaved parents were bearing up well. Functional shift has made bereaved a noun that is both singular and plural: The clergyman spoke privately to the bereaved, and she [they] seemed helped by his words.
