Regret

How to spell regret

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce regret

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does regret mean?

1. verbTo feel sorrow or remorse about something you did or failed to do.
2. nounA feeling of sorrow or remorse about something past.

Regret in a sentence

• verb

  Many workers regret not saving more for retirement.

• noun

  She felt a deep regret over the missed opportunity.

• verb

  Travellers often regret booking the cheaper hotel near the motorway.

• noun

  His only regret was leaving the job too soon.

Where does regret come from?

Language of origin: French

The word arrived in English in the 1300s from the Old French regreter, which meant 'to bewail' or 'to lament the dead'. The second element, greter, is widely thought to descend from a Germanic root meaning 'to weep' or 'to mourn', possibly related to the Old Norse grata 'to cry'; the re- at the front works as an intensifier rather than meaning 'again'. The earliest English uses kept that strong sense of grieving over a loss or a death, and over time it softened into the everyday meaning of feeling sorry about something you did or failed to do. Because the word ends in a single t after a short vowel, writers occasionally hesitate over whether to double the consonant, though the bare form keeps just one. The same mourning ancestry survives in related Romance words, and it is the reason regret still carries a genuine note of sorrow rather than mere mild disappointment.

How the word is built

• re- (intensive prefix)
• gret (from Old French greter: to weep, lament)