sorrowful
/ˈsɒrə(ʊ)fʊl
/ /ˈsɒrə(ʊ)f(ə)l/adjective
1Feeling or showing grief: she looked at him with sorrowful eyes...
- Whenever Harold falters, Albert produces one of his pained, sorrowful looks and laments about being a burden to him.
- As if in mournful counterpoint to his own grief, the boy heard the clear, sorrowful notes of an alto sax keening and sobbing out a blues melody.
- Don Quixote grows calm and sorrowful, and with good reason, as he approaches his final defeat at the hands of Sanson Carrasco.
Synonyms
sad, unhappy, dejected, regretful, depressed, downcast, miserable, downhearted, down, despondent, despairing, disconsolate, desolate, bowed down, wretched, glum, gloomy, doleful, dismal, blue, melancholy, melancholic, low-spirited, mournful, woeful, woebegone, forlorn, crestfallen, broken-hearted, heartbroken, inconsolable, grief-stricken
informal down in the mouth, down in the dumps
1.1Causing grief: the sorrowful news of his father’s death...
- There were prints of the front pages of some of the top international dailies with the sorrowful news that made headlines that day.
- I'll be back later with the sorrowful news when I figure out how I want to say it.
- Well, news which has sorrowful ramifications for the band anyway.
Synonyms
tragic, sad, unhappy, awful, miserable, wretched, sorry, pitiful, pitiable, grievous, traumatic, upsetting, depressing, distressing, disturbing, disquieting, dispiriting, heartbreaking, heart-rending, agonizing, harrowing
rare distressful
Derivatives
sorrowfully
/ adverb ...- However, upon arriving on campus, I sorrowfully discovered that this club was hibernating.
- Finally, he experienced a sort of seizure, and I watched sorrowfully as his wife wheeled him away.
- He sorrowfully mumbled his last lines with his head trapped in the curtains.
sorrowfulness
- Scenes of deep tragedy are treated with such a matter of factness and raw economy they become almost palpable in their unprotected sorrowfulness.
- One day, when he was living with his mother in Ch'i, she was struck with the sorrowfulness of his aspect as he stood leaning against a pillar, and asked him the cause of it.
- Let us take the sorrowfulness of Finnish music as an example.
Origin
Old English sorhful (see sorrow, -ful).