SORROWFUL

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does sorrowful mean? 

• SORROWFUL (adjective)
  The adjective SORROWFUL has 1 sense:

1. experiencing or marked by or expressing sorrow especially that associated with irreparable loss

  Familiarity information: SORROWFUL used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SORROWFUL (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Experiencing or marked by or expressing sorrow especially that associated with irreparable loss

Context example:

even in laughter the heart is sorrowful

Similar:

anguished; tormented; tortured (experiencing intense pain especially mental pain)

bereaved; bereft; grief-stricken; grieving; mourning; sorrowing (sorrowful through loss or deprivation)

bitter (expressive of severe grief or regret)

brokenhearted; heartbroken; heartsick (full of sorrow)

dolorous; dolourous; lachrymose; tearful; weeping (showing sorrow)

elegiac (expressing sorrow often for something past)

grievous; heartbreaking; heartrending (causing or marked by grief or anguish)

lamenting; wailful; wailing (vocally expressing grief or sorrow or resembling such expression)

lugubrious (excessively mournful)

mournful; plaintive (expressing sorrow)

sad (of things that make you feel sad)

woebegone; woeful (affected by or full of grief or woe)

Also:

unhappy (experiencing or marked by or causing sadness or sorrow or discontent)

joyless (not experiencing or inspiring joy)

Antonym:

joyful (full of or producing joy)

Derivation:

sorrowfulness (a state of gloomy sorrow)

sorrowfulness (the state of being sad)

 Context examples 

Not ill, but tired and sorrowful.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

But if his countenance was more sorrowful, his voice was more cheerful than that of his sister, especially when he addressed the old man.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

You puzzle me, Jane: your look and tone of sorrowful audacity perplex and pain me.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

I stood upon a chair when I was left alone, and looked into the glass to see how red my eyes were, and how sorrowful my face.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

So she did as the old woman told her, and set herself at the window, and looked about the country and seemed very sorrowful; then the huntsman said, What makes you so sad?

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

“I shall never be invited to Abbey-Mill again,” was said in rather a sorrowful tone.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

Fanny left the room with a very sorrowful heart; she could not feel the difference to be so small, she could not think of living with her aunt with anything like satisfaction.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

But she hugged the soft, stuffed body of the Scarecrow in her arms instead of kissing his painted face, and found she was crying herself at this sorrowful parting from her loving comrades.

(The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum)

For a few minutes our sorrowful hearts beat together, whilst the friends around us turned away their eyes that ran tears silently.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

It was late in the morning before they returned home; and no sooner had they entered the house than Marianne flew eagerly up stairs, and when Elinor followed, she found her turning from the table with a sorrowful countenance, which declared that no Willoughby had been there.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)