sore

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   causing misery or pain or distress

   it was a sore trial to him

2. 2
   adj

   Causing pain or discomfort; painfully sensitive.

   Her feet were sore from walking so far.

3. 3
   adj

   Sensitive; tender; easily pained, grieved, or vexed; very susceptible of irritation.

   Malice and hatred are very fretting and vexatious, and apt to make our minds sore and uneasy.

4. 4
   adj

   Dire; distressing.

   The school was in sore need of textbooks, theirs having been ruined in the flood.

5. 5
   adj

   Feeling animosity towards someone; annoyed or angered.

   Joe was sore at Bob for beating him at checkers.

6. 6
   adj

   Criminal; wrong; evil.

   […]and your water is a sore decayer of your whoreson dead body.

7. 7
   adv

   Very, excessively, extremely (of something bad).

   And they answered Ioshua, and said, Because it was certainely told thy seruants, how that the Lord thy God commanded his seruant Moses to giue you all the land, and to destroy all the inhabitants of the land from before you, therefore we were sore afraid of our liues because of you, and haue done this thing.

8. 8
   adv

   Sorely.

   And indeed I blamed myself and sore repented me of having taken compassion on him and continued in this condition, suffering fatigue not to be described, […]

Etymology

From Middle English sor, from Old English sār (“ache, wound”, noun) and sār (“painful, grievous”, adjective), from Proto-West Germanic *sair, from Proto-Germanic *sairaz (adjective) from Proto-Indo-European *sh₂eyro-, enlargement of *sh₂ey- (“to be fierce, afflict”). See also Dutch zeer (“sore, ache”), Danish sår (“wound”), German sehr (“very”); also Hittite [script needed] (sāwar, “anger”), Welsh hoed (“pain”), Ancient Greek αἱμωδία (haimōdía, “sensation of having teeth on edge”).