different between unpleasant vs sorrowful

English

Etymology

From Middle English unplesaunt, equivalent to un- +? pleasant.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?n?plez?nt/

Adjective

unpleasant (comparative unpleasanter or more unpleasant, superlative unpleasantest or most unpleasant)

1. Not pleasant.
   • c. 1596, William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act III, Scene 2,^[1]

     O sweet Portia,

     Here are a few of the unpleasant’st words

     That ever blotted paper!

   • 1722, Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year, London: E. Nutt, p. 214,^[2]

     It was indeed one admirable piece of Conduct in the said Magistrates, that the Streets were kept constantly clear, and free from all manner of frightful Objects, dead Bodies, or any such things as were indecent or unpleasant, unless where any Body fell down suddenly or died in the Streets […]

   • 1811, Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility, Chapter 35,^[3]

     The very circumstance, in its unpleasantest form, which they would each have been most anxious to avoid, had fallen on them.

   • 1865, Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter 1,^[4]

     […] she had read several nice little histories about children who had got burnt, and eaten up by wild beasts and other unpleasant things, all because they would not remember the simple rules their friends had taught them […]

   • 1921, Walter de la Mare, Memoirs of a Midget, Chapter 37,^[5]

     And I dipped into novels so like the unpleasanter parts of my own life that they might just as well have been autobiographies.

Derived terms

• unpleasantness

Synonyms

• disagreeable

Translations

Anagrams

• pennatulas

English

Etymology

From Middle English sorweful, from Old English sorhful, sorgful (“full of care; anxious; sorrowful”), from Proto-Germanic *surgafullaz (“full of care; anxious”), equivalent to sorrow +? -ful. Cognate with Old High German sorgfol (“careful; anxious”), Norwegian sorgfull (“sorrowful”), Icelandic sorgfullur (“lamentable”).

Pronunciation

• (Canada) IPA^(key): /?s??o?f?l/, /?s???f?l/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /?s??o?f?l/, /?s???f?l/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?s????f?l/, /?s???f?l/
• (General New Zealand) IPA^(key): /?s????f?l/, /?s???f?l/
• Hyphenation: sor?row?ful

Adjective

sorrowful (comparative more sorrowful, superlative most sorrowful)

1. (of a person) exhibiting sorrow; dejected; distraught.
2. Producing sorrow; causing grief.

   sorrowful accident

   • 1900, L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz Chapter 23

     She threw her arms around the Lion's neck and kissed him, patting his big head tenderly. Then she kissed the Tin Woodman, who was weeping in a way most dangerous to his joints. 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.

Synonyms

• mournful, lamentable, grievous
• See also Thesaurus:sad
• See also Thesaurus:lamentable

Translations

Further reading

• sorrowful in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• sorrowful in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.