regretful

comparative more regretful · superlative most regretful

1. Full of feelings of regret, indulging in regrets.

   I continued also the wish to be with you, and experienced a strange, regretful consciousness of some barrier dividing us.

   1847 October 16, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], Jane Eyre. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Smith, Elder, and Co., […], →OCLC

   5 more examples

   But, as their flowery garland was wreathed of the brightest roses that had grown there, so, in the tie that united them, were intertwined all the purest and best of their early joys. They went heavenward, supporting each other along the difficult path which it was their lot to tread and never wasted one regretful thought on the vanities of Merry Mount.

   1837 March 6, Nathaniel Hawthorne, “(please specify the chapter or story)”, in Twice-Told Tales, Boston, Mass.: American Stationers Co.; John B. Russell, →OCLC

   “I am working late to-night,” said I, “because I couldn't sleep, and wished to tire myself. But, dear guardian, you are late too, and look weary. You have no trouble, I hope, to keep you waking?” “None, little woman, that you would readily understand,” said he. He spoke in a regretful tone so new to me, that I inwardly repeated, as if that would help me to his meaning, “That I could readily understand!”

   1852 March – 1853 September, Charles Dickens, Bleak House, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1853, →OCLC

   There was a feeling of utter desolation in my heart, filling it with a despairing and regretful sense, that I had not gone down with Robert to the bottom of the sea.

   1853, Solomon Northup, edited by [David Wilson], Twelve Years a Slave. […], London: Sampson Low, Son & Co.; Auburn, N.Y.: Derby and Miller, →OCLC

   And there, aloof, yet persistently with her, moving wherever she moved, was the Will Ladislaw' who was a changed belief exhausted of hope, a detected illusion—no, a living man towards whom there could not yet struggle any wail of regretful pity, from the midst of scorn and indignation and jealous offended pride.

   1871–1872, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], Middlemarch […], volume (please specify |volume=I to IV), Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, book (please specify |book=I to VIII)

   Huck scanned his own clothing forlornly. "I reckon I ain't dressed fitten for a pirate," said he, with a regretful pathos in his voice; "but I ain't got none but these."

   1876, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Hartford, Conn.: The American Publishing Company, →OCLC

   Synonyms: repining, rueful, remorseful

2. Sorrowful about what has been lost or done.

   feel deeply regretful

   5 more examples

   feel bitterly regretful

   feel sincerely regretful

   Before dawn on Sunday ew had put Nagasaki behind us and were off on our 445 mile sail to Shanghai, regretful at leaving a country and a people who had entertained us so lavishly and free-heartedly for a week that always will be a luster of red letter days in the memory of all.

   1909, Robert H. Murray, Around the World with Taft

   "Dionne, one: I am seriously regretful over last night's lapse,"

   1997, H. B. Gilmour, Cher and Cher alike

   "Hell, mebbe we oughtn't've done that." Tony was regretful.

   2000, Richard Wright, The long dream