sorrowful

[sor-uh-fuhl, sawr-]

adjective

1. full of or feeling sorrow; grieved; sad.

   Synonyms: unhappy

2. showing or expressing sorrow; mournful; plaintive.

   a sorrowful song.

   Synonyms: melancholy

3. involving or causing sorrow; distressing.

   a sorrowful event.

   Synonyms: heartbreaking, piteous

Other Word Forms

• sorrowfully adverb
• sorrowfulness noun
• oversorrowful adjective
• oversorrowfully adverb
• oversorrowfulness noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of sorrowful¹

before 900; Middle English sorowful, Old English sorgful. See sorrow, -ful

Example Sentences

It’s the song on the album that most directly addresses her breakup, and does so unflinchingly with a sorrowful piano.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

Tonally, this steady and powerful film is everything the original program wasn’t: hesitant, sorrowful and compassionate for every human being onscreen.

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At the start, music is mournful but not quite sorrowful, a lightly contemplative jazz-inspired feel anchored by a steel hang drum.

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How sorrowful that it has come to this parting of ways, 140 years after the French presented us with that lovely monument to our shared spirit, the figure who lifts her lamp over Liberty Island.

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The country's Prime Minister Christopher Luxon called it a "dark and sorrowful day in New Zealand's history as a society", saying "we should have done better, and I am determined we will do so".

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Related Words

• affecting 
• distressing www.thesaurus.com
• heart-wrenching 
• heartrending 
• lugubrious 
• melancholy 
• mournful 
• painful 
• plaintive 
• sad 
• sorry