sorrow

Word family

• sorrowful
  adjectiveB2
• sorrowfully
  adverbC1
• sorry
  adjectiveA1

Synonym discussion

Sense: noun/1

Grief is the strongest of these terms, typically referring to deep emotional pain after a death or devastating loss, and is closely tied to the process of grieving. Sadness is the broadest and gentlest — it covers any feeling of unhappiness from mild to moderate, without carrying the same weight as sorrow or grief. Heartache adds a poetic, personal flavour, suggesting prolonged emotional pain from a relationship ending or a deep disappointment, rather than from death. Mourning describes the outward expression of grief through rituals, customs, or behaviour, rather than the inner emotion itself. For example, we say 'She felt deep grief at her mother's funeral' but 'The official mourning lasted forty days.' Sorrow sits between sadness and grief — deeper than ordinary unhappiness but less tightly linked to formal bereavement.

Common collocations

Etymology

Sorrow comes from Old English sorg (meaning pain, grief, or anxiety), which traces back to Proto-Germanic *surgō. The word is related to Old High German sorga (care, worry) and Old Norse sorg. For over a thousand years, its core meaning of deep emotional pain has stayed remarkably stable across Germanic languages.