regret

present singular third person regrets · participle present regretting · participle past regretted · past regretted

1. To feel sorry about (a thing that has or has not happened), afterthink: to wish that a thing had not happened, that something else had happened instead.

   He regretted his words.

   3 more examples

   I don't regret enrolling in law, but I regret not studying some Chinese.

   Judge Short had gone to town, and Farrar was off for a three days' cruise up the lake. I was bitterly regretting I had not gone with him when the distant notes of a coach horn reached my ear, and I descried a four-in-hand winding its way up the inn road from the direction of Mohair.

   1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter IV, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC

   Dear humanity, we regret bein' alien bastards, we regret comin' to Earth, and we most definitely regret the Corps just blew up our raggedy-ass fleet!

   2004 November 9, Bungie, Halo 2, spoken by Avery Johnson (David Scully), Microsoft Game Studios, Xbox, level/area: Outskirts

   Synonyms: rue

2. broadlyTo feel sorry about (any thing).

   I regret that I have to do this, but I don't have a choice.

   1 more example

   They said they regretted to inform us that the train would be late.

   Synonyms: grieve, lament, aggrieve, besorrow, condole, darken, engrieve, erme

3. archaictransitiveTo miss; to feel the loss or absence of; to mourn.

   He more than ever regretted his home, and with increased desire longed to see his family.

   1845, The Church of England Magazine, volume 19, page 301

   1 more example

   This [the Cage] was but one of Cluny’s hiding-places; he had caves, besides, and underground chambers in several parts of his country; and following the reports of his scouts, he moved from one to another as the soldiers drew near or moved away. By this manner of living, and thanks to the affection of his clan, he had not only stayed all this time in safety, while so many others had fled or been taken and slain: but stayed four or five years longer, and only went to France at last by the express command of his master. There he soon died; and it is strange to reflect that he may have regretted his Cage upon Ben Alder.

   1886 May 1 – July 31, Robert Louis Stevenson, Kidnapped, being Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour in the Year 1751: […], London; Paris: Cassell & Company, published 1886, →OCLC

plural regrets

1. countableuncountableEmotional pain on account of something done or experienced in the past, with a wish that it had been different; a looking back with dissatisfaction or with longing.

   Never any prince expressed a more lively regret for the loss of a servant.

   1702–1704, Edward [Hyde, 1st] Earl of Clarendon, (please specify |book=I to XVI), in The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, Begun in the Year 1641. […], Oxford, Oxfordshire: Printed at the [Sheldonian] Theater

   3 more examples

   What man does not remember with regret the first time he read Robinson Crusoe?

   1828, Thomas Macaulay, John Dryden

   From its peaceful bosom [the grave] spring none but fond regrets and tender recollections.

   1819 June 23 – 1820 September 13, Geoffrey Crayon [pseudonym; Washington Irving], “(please specify the title)”, in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., New York, N.Y.: […] C[ornelius] S. Van Winkle, […], →OCLC

   Zuckerberg, whose company has been blamed for enabling genocide in Myanmar because it did not bother to hire moderators who speak Burmese, for example, added that one of his life’s biggest regrets is competing on the fencing team in high school rather than wrestling.

   2022 August 26, Jason Koebler, “Mark Zuckerberg Now Obsessed With MMA, ‘Rolling and Wrestling With Friends’”, in Vice, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 13 Sep 2024

   Synonyms: nostalgia, remorse, repentance, unsatisfaction, agenbite, remorse, rue, ruth

2. countableobsoleteuncountableDislike; aversion.

   Is it a vertue to have some ineffective regrets to damnation, and such a Vertue too, as shall serve to ballance all our vices?

   1667, Richard Allestree, The Causes of the Decay of Christian Piety

3. countableuncountabledecision theoryThe amount of avoidable loss that results from choosing the wrong action.

   Under squared errorloss we show that there exists unique minimax regret solution for the problem of selecting the threshold.

   2002, Bernd Droge, On the Minimax Regret Estimation of a Restricted Normal Mean, and Implications

   1 more example

   Each loss then represents this unavoidable loss plus a regret (loss due to ignorance of Ө). Subtracting these unavoidable losses, we obtain the regret table, Table 1.7, and the average regret table, Table 1.8.

   2012, Herman Chernoff, Lincoln E. Moses, Elementary Decision Theory, page 12

4. countableuncountableOne who was invited to an event who was unable to attend, but notified the organizer of this beforehand; a nonattendee.