Contextualizebeta

sorry

adj
/ˈsɒɹi/UK/ˈsɑɹi/US/ˈsoɹi/CA/ˈsɔɹɪ/

Etymology

From Middle English sory, from Old English sāriġ (“feeling or expressing grief, sorry, grieved, sorrowful, sad, mournful, bitter”), from Proto-West Germanic *sairag, from Proto-Germanic *sairagaz (“sad”), from Proto-Indo-European *seh₂yro (“hard, rough, painful”). Cognate with Scots sairie (“sad, grieved”), Saterland Frisian seerich (“sore, inflamed”), West Frisian searich (“sad, sorry”), Low German serig (“sick, scabby”), German dialectal sehrig (“sore, sad, painful”), Swedish sårig. By surface analysis, sor(e) + -y. Unrelated to sorrow despite the similarity in form and meaning.

  1. derived from *seh₂yro✻ — “hard, rough, painful”
  2. inherited from *sairagaz✻ — “sad”
  3. inherited from *sairag✻
  4. inherited from sāriġ — “feeling or expressing grief, sorry, grieved, sorrowful, sad, mournful, bitter”
  5. inherited from sory

Definitions

  1. Regretful or apologetic for one's actions.

    • I am sorry I stepped on your toes. It was an accident.

  2. Grieved or saddened, especially by the loss of something or someone.

    • I feel sorry for you, about your exam results.
    • The President was sorry to hear that the Ambassador was leaving.

  3. Poor, pitifully sad or regrettable.

    • The storm left his garden in a sorry state.
    • ... often the only movement on the landscape is winter smoke winding out the chimney of some sorry-looking farmhouse ...
  4. ›+ 9 more definitions

    1. Pathetic

      Pathetic; contemptibly inadequate.

      • Bob is a sorry excuse for a football player.
      • The sorry experience did little to suggest that Musk knows how to run a social media platform or that DeSantis is capable of governing a global superpower armed with nuclear weapons.

    2. Expresses regret, remorse, or sorrow.

      • Sorry! I didn't see that you were on the phone.
      • Sorry about yesterday. — No worries.
      • Sorry I’m so late.

    3. Said as a request to excuse one's unintentional behaviors.

      • Oops! Sorry!

    4. Said as a request to pass somebody.

      • Sorry! Coming through!

    5. Used as a request for someone to repeat something not heard or understood clearly.

      • Sorry? What was that? The phone cut out.

    6. Used to correct oneself in speech.

      • There are four—sorry, five—local branches of the store.

    7. Used as a hedge.

      • Sorry, but I don't care what you think.

    8. The act of saying sorry

      The act of saying sorry; an apology.

      • The British would do it standing stock still, Latinos would dance their sorries, and Canadians would find a way to apologize on ice.
      • So learn how to tailor your sorries to the sexes. Women tend to want an acknowledgment of what they're going through...

    9. To feel sorry (for someone).

      • Jus' that once I sorried for her. Souls cross the skies o' time, Abbess'd say, like clouds crossin' skies o' the world.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

A definitional loop anchored at sorry. 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.

01sorry02apologetic03regretfully04regret05afterthink06repent

A definitional loop anchored at sorry. Each word in the ring appears in the definition of the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself.

6 hops · closes at sorry

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