sorrow

• sorrowe (obsolete)

From Middle English sorow, sorwe, sorghe, sorȝe, 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.

• (Received Pronunciation) enPR: sŏrʼō, IPA^(key): /ˈsɒɹ.əʊ/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈsɑɹ.oʊ/
• (Canada) IPA^(key): /ˈsɔɹ.oʊ/

• Audio (US)

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• Rhymes: -ɒɹəʊ

sorrow (countable and uncountable, plural sorrows)

1. (uncountable) unhappiness, woe
   • August 28, 1750, Samuel Johnson, The Rambler No. 47

     The safe and general antidote against sorrow is employment.

2. (countable) (usually in plural) An instance or cause of unhappiness.
   • 1903, Maud Salvini, “Salvini as I Know Him”, in The Theatre, number 3, page 312:

     She had nursed all the children, including Sandro, to whom she was devoted, and my husband was just as fond of her. His going away to America was a great sorrow to her, and she always kept the sacred light burning on a little altar for Sandro all the time of his long absence.

   • 1963, C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins, 2nd Revised edition, page 14:

     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.

   Parting is such sweet sorrow.

sorrow (third-person singular simple present sorrows, present participle sorrowing, simple past and past participle sorrowed)

1. (intransitive) To feel or express grief.
   • 1749, Henry Fielding, Tom Jones, Folio Society, published 1973, page 424:

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

   • 1911, James George Frazer, The Golden Bough, volume 11, page 241:

     When, as sometimes happens, a lad dies from the effect of the operation, he is buried secretly in the forest, and his sorrowing mother is told that the monster has a pig's stomach as well as a human stomach, and that unfortunately her son slipped into the wrong stomach.

2. (transitive) To feel grief over; to mourn, regret.
   • 1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 12, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book II, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC:

     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.

• besorrow

• “sorrow”, in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present.
• "sorrow" in WordNet 3.1, Princeton University, 2011.