3 definitions found

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

sorry

adjective

1: keenly sorry or regretful; "felt bad about letting the team down"; "was sorry that she had treated him so badly"; "felt bad about breaking the vase" [syn: {bad}]

2: feeling or expressing sorrow or pity; "a pitying observer threw his coat around her shoulders"; "let him perish without a pitying thought of ours wasted upon him"- Thomas De Quincey [syn: {pitying}, {sorry for(p)}]

3: having regret or sorrow or a sense of loss over something done or undone; "felt regretful over his vanished youth"; "regretful over mistakes she had made" [syn: {regretful}] [ant: {unregretful}]

4: feeling or expressing pain or sorrow for sins or offenses [syn: {contrite}, {remorseful}, {rueful}, {ruthful}]

5: bad; unfortunate; "my finances were in a deplorable state"; "a lamentable decision"; "her clothes were in sad shape"; "a sorry state of affairs" [syn: {deplorable}, {distressing}, {lamentable}, {pitiful}, {sad}]

6: depressing in character or appearance; "drove through dingy streets"; "the dismal prison twilight"- Charles Dickens; "drab old buildings"; "a dreary mining town"; "gloomy tenements"; "sorry routine that follows on the heels of death"- B.A.Williams [syn: {dingy}, {dismal}, {drab}, {drear}, {dreary}, {gloomy}]

7: without merit; "a sorry horse"; "a sorry excuse"; "a lazy no-count, good-for-nothing goldbrick"; "the car was a no-good piece of junk" [syn: {good-for-nothing}, {good-for-naught}, {meritless}, {no-account}, {no-count}, {no-good}] [also: {sorriest}, {sorrier}]

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:

Sorry \Sor"ry\, adjective [Compar. {Sorrier}; superl. {Sorriest}.] [OE. sory, sary, AS. s[=a]rig, fr. s[=a]r, noun, sore. See {Sore}, n. & a. The original sense was, painful; hence, miserable, sad.]

1. Grieved for the loss of some good; pained for some evil; feeling regret; -- now generally used to express light grief or affliction, but formerly often used to express deeper feeling. ''I am sorry for my sins.'' --Piers Plowman.

Ye were made sorry after a godly manner. --2 Cor. vii. 9.

I am sorry for thee, friend; 't is the duke's pleasure. --Shak.

She entered, were he lief or sorry. --Spenser.

2. Melancholy; dismal; gloomy; mournful. --Spenser.

All full of chirking was this sorry place. --Chaucer.

3. Poor; mean; worthless; as, a sorry excuse. ''With sorry grace.'' --Chaucer.

Cheeks of sorry grain will serve. --Milton.

Good fruit will sometimes grow on a sorry tree. --Sir W. Scott.

Syn: Hurt; afflicted; mortified; vexed; chagrined; melancholy; dismal; poor; mean; pitiful.

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

119 Moby Thesaurus words for "sorry": abject, apologetic, ashamed, bad, base, base-minded, beggarly, beneath contempt, beneath one, cheap, cheerless, cheesy, common, compunctious, conscience-smitten, conscience-stricken, contemptible, contrite, crummy, debasing, degrading, demeaning, deplorable, depressing, despicable, discontented, disgraceful, dismal, full of remorse, gaudy, gimcracky, grim, gutter, heavyhearted, humiliating, humiliative, humorless, ignoble, ill-starred, in bad humor, inadequate, infestive, infra dig, infra indignitatem, joyless, low, low-minded, mean, melancholy, meretricious, mirthless, miserable, opprobrious, out of humor, out of sorts, outrageous, paltry, pathetic, penitent, penitential, pitiable, pitiful, pleasureless, poor, regretful, remorseful, repentant, repining, rubbishy, rueful, sad, saddened, scandalous, scrubby, scruffy, scummy, scurvy, scuzzy, self-accusing, self-condemning, self-convicting, self-debasing, self-flagellating, self-humiliating, self-punishing, self-reproaching, shabby, shamefaced, shamefast, shameful, shocking, shoddy, sordid, sorrowful, sorryish, star-crossed, stark, too bad, trashy, trifling, trumpery, two-for-a-cent, two-for-a-penny, twopenny, twopenny-halfpenny, unbecoming, uncheerful, uncheery, unhappy, unhappy about, unjoyful, unmirthful, unsmiling, unworthy of one, valueless, vile, wistful, worthless, wretched

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