regrets

Noun

regret (countable and uncountable, plural regrets)

1. Emotional pain 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.
   • What man does not remember with regret the first time he read Robinson Crusoe?1828, Thomas Macaulay, John Dryden

   Synonyms:

   nostalgia, remorse, repentance, unsatisfaction, agenbite, rue, ruth, compunction, contrition, guilt

2. (obsolete) Dislike; aversion.
   • Is it a vertue to have some ineffective regrets to damnation, and such a Vertue too, as shall serve to ballance all our vices?1667, Richard Allestree, The Causes of the Decay of Christian Piety
3. (decision theory) The amount of avoidable loss that results from choosing the wrong action.
   • Under squared errorloss we show that there exists unique minimax regret solution for the problem of selecting the threshold.2002, Bernd Droge, On the Minimax Regret Estimation of a Restricted Normal Mean, and Implications
4. One who was invited to an event who was unable to attend, but notified the organizer of this beforehand; a nonattendee.

See all 7 meanings of regret