Word.ws English Dictionary

sorb

/sɔːb/US/sɔɹb/

sorb noun: the service tree, Sorbus domestica.

sorb: the service tree, Sorbus domestica
Image: Claire FELLONI, via Tela Botanica, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

sorb (plural sorbs)

  1. The service tree, Sorbus domestica.
  2. Any of various related trees, including the wild service tree, S. torminalis, and the rowan, S. aucuparia.
  3. The fruit of any of these trees, especially of the service tree.

Verb

sorb (third-person singular simple present sorbs, present participle sorbing, simple past and past participle sorbed)

  1. To absorb or adsorb.
    • In sediments with large cation exchange capacities, as calculated from the mineral composition (Duursma and Eisma, unpublished), the radionuclides were somewhat more strongly sorbed (Figure 2).1971, E. K. Duursma, M. G. Gross, Chapter Six: Marine Sediments and Radioactivity, National Research Council (U.S.) Committee on Oceanography Panel on Radioactivity in the Marine Environment...
    • The exchange of pesticide compounds between aqueous solution and the sorbed phase in soils is not instantaneous.2005, J. E. Barbash, “The Geochemistry of Pesticides”, in Barbara Sherwood Lollar, editor, Treatise on Geochemistry 9: Environmental Geochemistry, Second Edition, page 548

Noun (2) capitalized: Sorb

Sorb (plural Sorbs)

  1. A member of a Slavic people living in Lusatia in eastern Germany.

Forms of sorb

Noun
pluralsorbs
pluralSorbs
Verb
third-person singular presentsorbs
present participlesorbing
past participlesorbed
pastsorbed

Origin of sorb

Borrowed from Middle French sorbier (the tree), sorbe (the fruit), from Latin sorbus (the tree), sorbum (the fruit). See service tree.

Back-formation from absorb and adsorb; ultimately from Latin sorbeō.

Borrowed from German Sorbe, from Lower Sorbian Serb, the self-appointed name. Doublet of Serb.

Words formed from sorb

Phrases with sorb

Questions about sorb

What does sorb mean?
Sorb means the service tree, Sorbus domestica.
What part of speech is sorb?
Sorb can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce sorb?
Sorb is pronounced /sɔːb/ (UK).
What is the plural of sorb?
The plural of sorb is sorbs.

Words near sorb in the dictionary

  1. Soraren
  2. soras
  3. Sorath
  4. soravtansine
  5. Soraya
  6. sorb
  7. sorb apple
  8. sorb apples
  9. sorb-apple
  10. sorb-apples
  11. sorbabilities

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sorb (page history and authors); Sorb (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-sorb.wav.

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