sorrow
nounEtymology
From Middle English sorwe, sorow, sorewe, from Old English sorg, sorh (“care, anxiety, sorrow, grief”), from Proto-West Germanic *sorgu, from Proto-Germanic *surgō (compare West Frisian soarch, Dutch zorg, German Sorge, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian sorg), from Proto-Indo-European *swergʰ- (“watch over, worry; be ill, suffer”) (compare Old Irish serg (“sickness”), Tocharian B sark (“sickness”), Lithuanian sirgti (“be sick”), Sanskrit सूर्क्षति (sū́rkṣati, “worry”). Despite the similarity in form and meaning, not historically related to sorry and sore.
Definitions
unhappiness, woe
- But sorrow that is couch'd in seeming gladness Is like that mirth fate turns to sudden sadness.
- The safe and general antidote against sorrow is employment.
(usually in plural) An instance or cause of unhappiness.
- Parting is such sweet sorrow.
- Vaublanc, in San Domingo so sympathetic to the sorrows of labour in France, had to fly from Paris in August, 1792, to escape the wrath of the French workers.
To feel or express grief.
- ‘Sorrow not, sir,’ says he, ‘like those without hope.’
›+ 2 more definitionsshow fewer
To feel grief over
To feel grief over; to mourn, regret.
- It is impossible to make a man naturally blind, to conceive that he seeth not; impossible to make him desire to see, and sorrow his defect.
A surname.
The neighborhood
Derived
a sorrow shared is a sorrow halved, China's Sorrow, drown one's sorrows, Our Lady of Sorrows, seeksorrow, shared sorrow is half sorrow, sorrowful, sorrowfully, sorrowfulness, sorrowless, sorrowly, sorrow-ridden, sorrowsome, sorrowy, tree of sorrow, besorrow, oversorrow, sorrower, sorrowingly, unsorrowing
Vish — recursive loop
A definitional loop anchored at sorrow. Each word in the ring is defined by the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself. Scroll to it and watch.
A definitional loop anchored at sorrow. Each word in the ring appears in the definition of the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself.
8 hops · closes at sorrow
curated · pre-corpus. live cycle detection across the full graph is the next major milestone.
sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA