sorrow

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   an emotion of great sadness associated with loss or bereavement

   We felt tremendous sorrow for their loss.

2. 2
   noun

   sadness associated with some wrong done or some disappointment

   The lawyer drank to drown their sorrows.

3. 3
   noun

   unhappiness, woe

   But sorrow that is couch'd in seeming gladness Is like that mirth fate turns to sudden sadness.

4. 4
   noun

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

   Parting is such sweet sorrow.

5. 5
   verb

   To feel or express grief.

   ‘Sorrow not, sir,’ says he, ‘like those without hope.’

6. 6
   verb

   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.

7. 7
   noun

   something that causes great unhappiness

8. 8
   noun

   the state of being sad

Etymology

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.