Word.ws English Dictionary

regrettably

regrettably adverb: in a manner inspiring or deserving regret.

Adverb

regrettably (comparative more regrettably, superlative most regrettably)

  1. In a manner inspiring or deserving regret.
    • Your exam results are regrettably poor: you should regretfully reflect on all the time wasted reading comics.

Examples of regrettably in a sentence

  • The Titanic was advertised as being unsinkable; regrettably it turned out to be quite sinkable.
  • On other subjects, regrettably, it took him a bit longer to make progress.
  • Regrettably, this rejection of sphexishness is not that great an argument.

All 14 example sentences with regrettably

Synonyms of regrettably

Forms of regrettably

comparativemore regrettably
superlativemost regrettably

Origin of regrettably

From regrettable + -ly.

Questions about regrettably

What does regrettably mean?
Regrettably means in a manner inspiring or deserving regret.
What part of speech is regrettably?
Regrettably is an adverb.

Words near regrettably in the dictionary

  1. regrets
  2. regrets only
  3. regrettability
  4. regrettable
  5. regrettableness
  6. regrettably
  7. regretted
  8. regretter
  9. regretters
  10. regrettest
  11. regretteth

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: regrettably (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-regrettably.wav.

Cite this entry: “regrettably.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/regrettably. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.