Noun: sorrow
| Singular | sorrow |
| Plural | sorrows |
Sample Sentences
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But sorrow that is couch'd in seeming gladness
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Is like that mirth fate turns to sudden sadness. [c. 1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene i]:]
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The safe and general antidote against sorrow is employment. [August 28, 1750, Samuel Johnson, The Rambler No. 47]
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Beijing’s bureaucrats may claim they are preventing fires, but what they are really igniting is resentment, sorrow, and resistance. The flames they lit were consuming trust, dignity, and the fragile hope that religious freedom might one day be respected in Tibet. [2025 December 16, Lopsang Gurung (pseudonym), “Golog Prefecture, Qinghai Province: Beijing’s Bonfire of Tibetan Prayer Flags”, in Bitter Winter:]
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Parting is such sweet sorrow.
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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. [1903, Maud Salvini, “Salvini as I Know Him”, in The Theatre, number 3, page 312:]
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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. [1963, C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins, 2nd Revised edition, page 14:]
Nouns inflected like sorrow
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
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. See: Middle English Nouns '
sorwe', Old English Nouns '
sorg', Dutch Nouns '
zorg', German Nouns '
Sorge'.
Verbs referencing "sorrow"
German Nouns
Sorge, Dutch Nouns
zorg, Gothic Nouns
𐍃𐌰𐌿𐍂𐌲𐌰, Finnish Nouns
surku.