Definition
adjRegretful or apologetic for one's actions.
adjGrieved or saddened, especially by the loss of something or someone.
Sentence Examples
Why are you sorry for something you haven't done?
I'm sorry, I can't stay long.
We're very sorry about the damage to your car.
Word Origin & History
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.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"... often the only movement on the landscape is winter smoke winding out the chimney of some sorry-looking farmhouse ..."
— 1948, Truman Capote, Other Voices, Other Rooms, Part One, 1:
"The sorry experience did little to suggest that Musk knows how to run a social media platform or that DeSantis is capable of governing a global superpower armed with nuclear weapons."
— 2023 May 25, David Smith, “Failure to launch: Twitter glitches deal double blow to Elon Musk and Ron DeSantis”, in The Guardian, →ISSN, archived from the original on 10 Aug 2023:
"The British would do it standing stock still, Latinos would dance their sorries, and Canadians would find a way to apologize on ice."
— 2007, Christopher Levan, Give Us This Day: Lenten Reflections on Baking Bread and Discipleship, page 107:
"So learn how to tailor your sorries to the sexes. Women tend to want an acknowledgment of what they're going through..."
— 2008, Lucy S. Danziger, Self Magazine's 15 Minutes to Your Best Self:
"Jus' that once I sorried for her. Souls cross the skies o' time, Abbess'd say, like clouds crossin' skies o' the world."
— 2004, David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas, Toronto, Ont.: Vintage Canada, →ISBN, page 302: