Regret vs Remorseful – What’s the difference?

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Regret vs Remorseful - What's the difference?
As a verb regret is to feel sorry about (a thing that has or has not happened), afterthink: to wish that a thing had not happened, that something else had happened instead.
As a noun regret is 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.

As an adjective remorseful is (of a person) feeling or filled with remorse.

regret

English

(wikipedia regret )

Verb

(regrett)

  • To feel sorry about (a thing that has or has not happened), afterthink: to wish that a thing had not happened, that something else had happened instead.
  • *

    • , title=(The Celebrity), chapter=4
    , passage=Judge Short had gone to town, and Farrar was off for a three days’ cruise up the lake. I was bitterly regretting I had not gone with him when the distant notes of a coach horn reached my ear, and I descried a four-in-hand winding its way up the inn road from the direction of Mohair.}}

  • (more generally) To feel sorry about (any thing).

    • Usage notes

    This is a catenative verb that takes the gerund (the (-ing) form), except in set phrases with tell, say, and inform, where the to infinitive is used. See

    Derived terms

    * regretter

    Noun

  • 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.
  • * Macaulay
    • What man does not remember with regret the first time he read Robinson Crusoe ?
  • * Clarendon
    • Never any prince expressed a more lively regret for the loss of a servant.
  • * Washington Irving
    • From its peaceful bosom [the grave] spring none but fond regrets and tender recollections.
  • (obsolete) Dislike; aversion.

    • See also

    * remorse
    * repentance

    External links

    *
    *
    —-

    remorseful

    English

    Adjective

    (en adjective )

  • (of a person) Feeling or filled with remorse.
    • He was so remorseful that he voluntarily paid full restitution.
  • Expressing or caused by remorse.
    • There was a remorseful look on her face.

    Synonyms

    * penitent
    * apologetic
    * regretful
    *

    Antonyms

    * unremorseful
    * unrepentant

    Related terms

    * remorse
    * remorsefully
    * remorsefulness

    References

    *
    *
    * ” remorseful” in Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary © Cambridge University Press 2007.
    * Oxford English Dictionary , 2nd ed., 1989.
    * Random House Webster’s Unabridged Electronic Dictionary , 1987-1996.

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