sorry
Americanadjective
-
sorrier,
comparative
-
sorriest
superlative
-
feeling regret, compunction, sympathy, pity, etc..
to be sorry to leave one's friends; to be sorry for a remark; to be sorry for someone in trouble.
- Synonyms:
- pitying, sympathetic, regretful
- Antonyms:
- happy
-
regrettable or deplorable; unfortunate; tragic.
a sorry situation; to come to a sorry end.
-
sorrowful, grieved, or sad.
Was she sorry when her brother died?
-
associated with sorrow; suggestive of grief or suffering; melancholy; dismal.
-
wretched, poor, useless, or pitiful.
a sorry horse.
- Synonyms:
- worthless, paltry, contemptible, abject, shabby
interjection
adjective
-
feeling or expressing pity, sympathy, remorse, grief, or regret
I feel sorry for him
-
pitiful, wretched, or deplorable
a sorry sight
-
poor; paltry
a sorry excuse
-
affected by sorrow; sad
-
causing sorrow or sadness
interjection
Synonym Usage
See wretched.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Adjectives
Etymology
Origin of sorry
First recorded before 900; Middle English; Old English sārig; cognate with Low German sērig, Old High German sērag. See sore, -y 1
Explanation
To be sorry is to feel regret or feel bad about something — usually something you did. "I'm sorry" is an apology. If you're feeling sorry about something, then you're feeling a combination of sadness and regret. You can be sorry for things you did, and you can also be sorry for bad things that happen to other people that don't involve you. At a funeral, people say "I'm sorry for your loss." The word sorry can also be used as an adjective to mean shoddy or crappy, as in "That is one sorry excuse!"
Vocabulary lists containing sorry
"The Road Not Taken"
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"The House on Mango Street" and "The Road Not Taken"
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"The Giving Tree"
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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.
See Examples For:
“I am so profoundly sorry that I was not in my city when my city needed me,” Bass said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 14, 2026
"I am a flawed human being who makes mistakes and am filled with shame over this incident. I am truly very sorry," she said at the time.
From BBC ● Oct. 12, 2026
“We love you all. We’re very sorry for the inconvenience.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 9, 2026
Piqued, Burkina's military ruler Ibrahim Traore complained the country's football was "in a sorry state" and threatened "significant decisions" to "remedy it".
From Barron's ● Oct. 8, 2026
“I’m sorry I disappeared inside for a while,” I say, but she doesn’t look upset, and she doesn’t waggle her eyebrows or ask me questions about Jonah that I don’t know how to answer.
From "Keeping Pace" by Laurie Morrison
He scored 24 goals, including two hat-tricks, and, without him, United would have been in an even sorrier state than the one they ended up in.
From BBC ● Jul. 8, 2022
And sorrier still because there might not be many more of them in the future.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 16, 2019
The one of us who dropped the mango is sufficiently sorry for her error, and even sorrier to discover that she has entirely misplaced her fork.
From The Verge ● Sep. 19, 2017
It’s a sorrier sign still that the Iranian foreign minister is in the right.
From Slate ● Jul. 18, 2017
The face she lifted to the woman was even sorrier than she realized, streaked with mud and tears.
From "The Witch of Blackbird Pond" by Elizabeth George Speare
It took until Game 162, but they clinched a spot in the postseason on Sunday, outlasting the even sadder Texas Rangers in baseball’s sorriest war of attrition.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 28, 2026
Having failed to learn from history, he’s poised to repeat its sorriest sagas, in the service of his ignorant, misinformed prejudices.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 24, 2024
Schofield recently revealed he believes his career is now over following the affair which he apologised for, calling it his "biggest, sorriest secret".
From BBC ● Aug. 15, 2023
One is by searching the sorriest episodes of U.S. foreign policy history for an analogy.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 16, 2021
Watching even the sorriest of sporting events bears no resemblance to coming upon an accident and hoping to exploit it for your own personal gain.
From "Me Talk Pretty One Day" by David Sedaris
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
