Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of remorseful
Explanation
The adjective remorseful is good for describing someone who is really, really sorry — like a teenager who borrows his parents' car without asking and drives it into a tree. Someone who feels remorseful has usually done something that he or she now feels guilty about. A defendant at a murder trial might be remorseful, and so might a little girl who has accidentally stepped on her cat's tail. The word remorseful means "full of remorse," and remorse comes from the Latin word remordere, "vex," or literally "to bite back." A popular phrase in Medieval Latin was remorsus conscientiæ, or "a biting back of one's conscience."
Vocabulary lists containing remorseful
Power Suffix: -ful
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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.
“Jirga”: Remorseful and resolute, an Australian soldier travels back to Afghanistan to beg forgiveness of those he hurt while serving there.
From Los Angeles Times • Dec. 26, 2019
In what turns out to be their final meeting, the detective duo drink beer beside the Cherwell at sunset, and Morse recites the AE Houseman poem that gives The Remorseful Day its characteristically punning title.
From The Guardian • Feb. 19, 2018
Remorseful and alienated in Act III, Onegin, when he returns to society after several years, is overwhelmed by the mature beauty of the now married Tatiana.
From New York Times • Jun. 25, 2017
The character died in The Remorseful Day, published in 1999.
From BBC • Mar. 22, 2017
Remorseful, too, because of her own selfish happiness, she felt more eager than ever to comfort the lonely freshman.
From The Girl Scouts' Good Turn by Lavell, Edith
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.
