sorrow
noun
- drawing by Vincent van Gogh
verb
- sorrow
Wiktionary
Pronunciation: /ˈsɒɹəʊ/ / /ˈsɑɹoʊ/ / /ˈsɔɹoʊ/
name
Etymology: Probably a calque of German Sorge (“sorrow”).
- A surname.
noun
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.
- unhappiness, woe
“But sorrow that is couch'd in seeming gladness Is like that mirth fate turns to sudden sadness.”
“The safe and general antidote against sorrow is employment.”
- (usually in plural) An instance or cause of unhappiness.
“Parting is such sweet sorrow.”
“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.”
verb
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.
- To feel or express grief.
“‘Sorrow not, sir,’ says he, ‘like those without hope.’”
“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.”
- 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.”