regrettableadj.

1603 J. Florio tr. M. de Montaigne Ess. iii. ix. 586 I have seene some..hate their health, because it was not regreetable [Fr. regrettable].

1693 T. Urquhart & P. A. Motteux tr. F. Rabelais 3rd Bk. Wks. xlviii. 389 The loss of Osyris was not so regreatable in Isis.

1761 Things as they Are (Dublin ed. 2nd Pt.) 36 The sacrifice of money alone would not satisfy: but that incomparably more regrettable one of British lives.

1832 T. Carlyle in Fraser's Mag. May 381/1 The fact of their existence is not the less certain and regretable.

1867 Visct. Strangford Sel. Writings (1869) I. 118 It is, therefore, all the more regrettable to come upon the traces of their vitality in French opinion.

1889 Times 31 Aug. 5/1 These raids are very regrettable.

1920 E. Wharton Age of Innocence viii. 56 She returned with her little orphaned niece, whose parents had been popular in spite of their regrettable taste for travel.

1986 K. Ishiguro Artist of Floating World 193 He would have followed my career over the years and have been fully aware of its more regrettable aspects.

2006 M. Pollan Omnivore's Dilemma xvii. 315 Not that the sacrifice of our animality is necessarily regrettable; no one regrets our giving up raping and pillaging.

1835 Tait's Edinb. Mag. New Ser. 2 454 The custom, we suspect, was one of the few regrettable observances of the feudal era.

1871 J. Earle Philol. Eng. Tongue Introd. 35 Our loss of this most regrettable old pronoun [sc. man].

1872 Brit. & Foreign Evangelical Rev. 21 126 The regrettableness of the minor differences which at present divide those who profess to be their [sc. our Reformers'] descendants.

1913 Eng. Hist. Rev. July 555 The regrettableness of the lapses from what might have been.

2007 M. H. Kramer Objectivity & Rule of Law ii. 177 The regrettableness of such prejudices partly resides in the fact that they typically redound to the detriment of people to whom they do not apply.