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countable and uncountable, plural sorrows
(uncountable) unhappiness, woe quotations examples
The safe and general antidote against sorrow is employment.
August 28, 1750, Samuel Johnson, The Rambler No. 47
(countable) (usually in plural) An instance or cause of unhappiness. quotations examples
She had nursed all the children, including Sandro, to whom she was devoted, and my husband was just as fond of her. His going away to America was a great sorrow to her, and she always kept the sacred light burning on a little altar for Sandro all the time of his long absence.
1903, Maud Salvini, “Salvini as I Know Him”, in The Theatre, number 3, page 312
Vaublanc, in San Domingo so sympathetic to the sorrows of labour in France, had to fly from Paris in August, 1792, to escape the wrath of the French workers.
1963, C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins, 2nd Revised edition, page 14
third-person singular simple present sorrows, present participle sorrowing, simple past and past participle sorrowed
(intransitive) To feel or express grief. quotations examples
‘Sorrow not, sir,’ says he, ‘like those without hope.’
1749, Henry Fielding, Tom Jones, Folio Society, published 1973, page 424
When, as sometimes happens, a lad dies from the effect of the operation, he is buried secretly in the forest, and his sorrowing mother is told that the monster has a pig's stomach as well as a human stomach, and that unfortunately her son slipped into the wrong stomach.
1911, James George Frazer, The Golden Bough, volume 11, page 241
(transitive) To feel grief over; to mourn, regret. quotations examples
It is impossible to make a man naturally blind, to conceive that he seeth not; impossible to make him desire to see, and sorrow his defect.
1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 12, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book II, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […]