REGRET • FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • Definition of Regret

Translators

Dictionaries

Courses

Other

Home

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/rəgrˈɛt/ /rɪgrˈɛt/ Listen

verb

Regret v. t. (past & past part. regretted; pres. part. regretting) To experience regret on account of; to lose or miss with a sense of regret; to feel sorrow or dissatisfaction on account of (the happening or the loss of something); as, to regret an error; to regret lost opportunities or friends. "Calmly he looked on either life, and here Saw nothing to regret, or there to fear." "In a few hours they (the Israelites) began to regret their slavery, and to murmur against their leader." "Recruits who regretted the plow from which they had been violently taken."

noun

Regret n.

Pain of mind on account of something done or experienced in the past, with a wish that it had been different; a looking back with dissatisfaction or with longing; grief; sorrow; especially, a mourning on account of the loss of some joy, advantage, or satisfaction. "A passionate regret at sin." "What man does not remember with regret the first time he read Robinson Crusoe?" "Never any prince expressed a more lively regret for the loss of a servant." "From its peaceful bosom (the grave) spring none but fond regrets and tender recollections."

Dislike; aversion. (Obs.)

Synonyms: Grief; concern; sorrow; lamentation; repentance; penitence; self-condemnation. Regret, Remorse, Compunction, Contrition, Repentance. Regret does not carry with it the energy of remorse, the sting of compunction, the sacredness of contrition, or the practical character of repentance. We even apply the term regret to circumstance over which we have had no control, as the absence of friends or their loss. When connected with ourselves, it relates rather to unwise acts than to wrong or sinful ones.

See images of 'Regret'

Etymology of 'Regret'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Regret" Quotes from Famous Books

... of the most expensive cigar in the cigar-cabinet and lighted it as only a connoisseur can light a cigar, lovingly; he blew out the match lingeringly, with regret, and dropped it and the cigar's red collar with care into a large copper bowl on the centre table, instead of flinging it against the Japanese umbrella in the fireplace. (A grave disadvantage of radiators is that you cannot throw odds and ends into them.) He chose the most expensive cigar ...

— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett

... with great civility and many expressions of regret, that the design was lost: that they had made careful ...

— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson

... "Joe Sibley" (Whistler)—afterwards altered to Antony, a Swiss, and ruined—a witty, a debonair and careless genius was created. Just such an impression was made upon us by this character as Whistler's own studied butterfly-pose in life seemed intended to make. It was with the greatest regret we missed the fascinating figure from the novel when published in book form, a regret even confessed to by Whistler himself, though he had not been able to refrain from dashing into print over its publication. There was none other of the Bohemians described that so endeared himself to us, or that ...

— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood

... Sarle would find no opportunity of giving expression to the things to be seen in his eyes. It was a precarious joy to read those sweet things, but she dared not let him utter them. For when the debacle came at Cape Town, he must have nothing to regret. The moment they were quit of the ship and its scandal she would be relieved of her promise to Diana and able to tell him the truth. If he had spoken no word of love to her before then he would be free as air to go his way without speaking one, while she just ...

— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley

... on distant expeditions, or on perilous enterprises, or to assist him with his counsel in the doubtful intrigues of a half-barbarous court. He was thus frequently, and for a long space, absent from his castle and from his lady; and to this ground of regret we must add, that their union had not been blessed with children, to occupy the attention of the Lady of Avenel, while she was thus deprived of her ...

— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

More quotes...