sorrow

plural sorrows · alternative obsolete sorrowe

1. uncountableunhappiness, woe

   The safe and general antidote against sorrow is employment.

   August 28, 1750, Samuel Johnson, The Rambler No. 47

   2 more examples

   But sorrow that is couch'd in seeming gladness 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]

   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

   Synonyms: dejection, blueness, tristesse, mirthlessness, blues, crestfallenness, dejection, depression

2. countable(usually in plural) An instance or cause of unhappiness.

   Parting is such sweet sorrow.

   2 more examples

   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

   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

   Synonyms: misfortune, woe, adversity, apocalypse, calamity, catastrophe, disaster, misery

present singular third person sorrows · participle present sorrowing · participle past sorrowed · past sorrowed · alternative obsolete sorrowe

1. intransitiveTo feel or express grief.

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

   1749, Henry Fielding, Tom Jones, Folio Society, published 1973, page 424

   1 more example

   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.

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

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

2. transitiveTo 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.

   1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 12, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book II, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC

   Synonyms: bewail, grieve, afterthink, becry, begrieve, bemoan, bemourn, bewail

plural Sorrows

1. A surname.