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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

sorrow.

unhappiness, woe

6 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈsɒɹəʊ/Received-Pronunciation/ˈsɑɹoʊ/General-American/ˈsɔɹoʊ/Canada/ˈsɔɾo/Scotland

  1. unhappiness, woe

    uncountable

  2. (usually in plural) An instance or cause of unhappiness.

    countable
    Parting is such sweet sorrow.
Where this word comes from

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.

verb/ˈsɒɹəʊ/Received-Pronunciation/ˈsɑɹoʊ/General-American/ˈsɔɹoʊ/Canada/ˈsɔɾo/Scotland

  1. To feel or express grief.

    intransitive

  2. To feel grief over; to mourn, regret.

    transitive
Where this word comes from

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.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.