besorrow
besorrow verb: to sorrow about or over; care about; fill with care or sorrow; make sad.
Verb
besorrow (third-person singular simple present besorrows, present participle besorrowing, simple past and past participle besorrowed)
- To sorrow about or over; care about; fill with care or sorrow; make sad.
- Then to the woman, for her offence, God did pronounce this sore sentence: All pleasure that you had'st besorrow Shall changed be in lasting sorrow.1776, Sir David Lindsay, The works of ... Sir David Lindsay of the Mount
- The land of the West holds a maiden sweet, And the fairest face has she; But, oh! she has also Chicago feet, And that's what besorrows me.1884, John Ames Mitchell, Life
Synonyms of besorrow
Forms of besorrow
| third-person singular present | besorrows |
|---|---|
| present participle | besorrowing |
| past participle | besorrowed |
| past | besorrowed |
Origin of besorrow
From Middle English bisorȝen, from Old English besorgian (“to regret; be anxious about, dread, shrink from”), from Proto-West Germanic *bisorgōn, equivalent to be- + sorrow. Cognate with Saterland Frisian bisúurgje (“to obtain, get, take care of”), West Frisian besoargje (“to provide, deliver”), Dutch bezorgen (“to provide, deliver, take care of”), German besorgen (“to procure, acquire, attend to, take care of”), Swedish besörja (“to deal with, attend to”).
Questions about besorrow
- What does besorrow mean?
- Besorrow means to sorrow about or over; care about; fill with care or sorrow; make sad.
- What part of speech is besorrow?
- Besorrow is a verb.
- What is the past tense of besorrow?
- The past tense of besorrow is besorrowed.
Words near besorrow in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: besorrow (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “besorrow.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/besorrow. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.