Vocabulary in Sonnet 129

As scholar Stephen Booth notes, the word “woe” was often used in Elizabethan times as a pun on “woman,” as in “woman is a woe to man.” The speaker capitalizes on this idea of women as a source of shame and sorrow.

“Taker,” someone who seizes or takes possession of by force, could suggest undertones of rape. These violent undertones continue to suggest the negative associations that the speaker has with sex.