sadness
Americannoun
-
the quality or state of being sad; sorrow.
It’s frustrating to know the sadness you’re feeling and not be able to help you.
-
an instance of sorrow.
How can you be so unaware of the sadnesses these children have experienced?
Etymology
Origin of sadness
First recorded in 1300–50; Middle English sadnesse; sad ( def. ) + -ness ( def. )
Explanation
Someone who's blue feels sadness, like a little girl whose best friend has moved away. Use the noun sadness when you're talking about sorrow. Sadness may be the overwhelming mood at a funeral, for example, or an elderly man might describe his life's greatest sadness as letting his childhood sweetheart get away. An interesting thing about sadness is that its original meaning was "seriousness." It wasn't until the 1600s that it came to mean "full of sorrow."
Vocabulary lists containing sadness
Obama's speech at Connecticut vigil
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Florida's B.E.S.T. Common Suffixes: -ness
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Of all the things I saw in Ukraine, the most painful was the sadness in the eyes of Ukrainians who love America.
From The Wall Street Journal • Jun. 7, 2026
Headteacher Martin Clarke said it was "with great sadness" the school had to confirm the death of one of its students.
From BBC • May 27, 2026
Their reconciliation seems to owe to their sadness about the state of the world—discontents such as the artificial-intelligence revolution and the Gaza war trouble the background—and their nostalgia for the shared fancies of childhood.
From The Wall Street Journal • May 22, 2026
A: It fills me with great sadness to think that I've lost my home, a place I loved deeply because I felt like a guardian of the landscape.
From Barron's • May 21, 2026
They avoided other clumps of blackened trees just in case they stumbled into more holes, but each time Owen saw a burned-out denning site, he felt a pang of sadness.
From "Two Degrees" by Alan Gratz
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
