| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. |
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| regret |
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| SYLLABICATION: | re·gret |
| PRONUNCIATION: |  r -gr t |
| VERB: | Inflected forms: re·gret·ted, re·gret·ting, re·grets
| | TRANSITIVE VERB: | 1. To feel sorry, disappointed, or distressed about. 2. To remember with a feeling of loss or sorrow; mourn. | | INTRANSITIVE VERB: | To feel regret. | | NOUN: | 1. A sense of loss and longing for someone or something gone. 2. A feeling of disappointment or distress about something that one wishes could be different. 3. regrets A courteous expression of regret, especially at having to decline an invitation. | | ETYMOLOGY: | Middle English regretten, to lament, from Old French regreter : re-, re- + -greter, to weep (perhaps of Germanic origin). | | OTHER FORMS: | re·gretter —NOUN
| | SYNONYMS: | regret, sorrow, grief, anguish, woe, heartache, heartbreak These nouns denote mental distress. Regret has the broadest range, from mere disappointment to a painful sense of dissatisfaction or self-reproach, as over something lost or done: She looked back with regret on the pain she had caused her family. Sorrow connotes sadness caused by misfortune, affliction, or loss; it can also imply contrition: “sorrow for his … children, who needed his protection, and whom he could not protect” (James Baldwin). Grief is deep, acute personal sorrow, as that arising from irreplaceable loss: “Grief fills the room up of my absent child,/Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me” (Shakespeare). Anguish implies agonizing, excruciating mental pain: “I pray that our heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement” (Abraham Lincoln). Woe is intense, often prolonged wretchedness or misery: “the deep, unutterable woe/Which none save exiles feel” (W.E. Aytoun). Heartache most often applies to sustained private sorrow: The child's difficulties are a source of heartache to the parents. Heartbreak is overwhelming grief: “Better a little chiding than a great deal of heartbreak” (Shakespeare).
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| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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