sorry
/ˈsɑɹi/
Word Rarity
Common
Frequency: Zipf frequency 5.18 in modern English
8
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
2
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Regretful or apologetic for one's actions.
adj
Poor, pitifully sad or regrettable.
adj
intj
Said as a request to excuse one's unintentional behaviors.
intj
Used as a request for someone to repeat something not heard or understood clearly.
Example Sentences
- "I am sorry I stepped on your toes. It was an accident."
- "I feel sorry for you, about your exam results."
- "The President was sorry to hear that the Ambassador was leaving."
- "The storm left his garden in a sorry state."
- "... often the only movement on the landscape is winter smoke winding out the chimney of some sorry-looking farmhouse ..."
- "That his rigid denial of the personhood of women should so completely and immediately win a contemporary Boston audience, is a sorry index."
Etymology
From Middle English sory, from Old English sāriġ (“feeling or expressing grief, sorry, grieved, sorrowful, sad, mournful, bitter”), from Proto-West Germanic *sairag, from Proto-Germanic *sairagaz (“sad”), from Proto-Indo-European *seh₂yro (“hard, rough, painful”). Cognate with Scots sairie (“sad, grieved”), Saterland Frisian seerich (“sore, inflamed”), West Frisian searich (“sad, sorry”), Low German serig (“sick, scabby”), German dialectal sehrig (“sore, sad, painful”), Swedish sårig. By surface analysis, sor(e) + -y. Unrelated to sorrow despite the similarity in form and meaning.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈsɑɹi/
- British English: /ˈsɒɹi/