# soreness

> English word · Noun · frequency rank #29,097

## Definitions
1. The property, state, or condition of being sore; painfulness.

## Etymology
From Middle English sornes, sornesse, sarnesse, from Old English sārnes (“bodily pain; mental pain, affliction, grief”), from Proto-West Germanic *sairanassī, equivalent to sore + -ness. Cognate with Scots sairness (“soreness”), Old Frisian sērnisse, sērnesse (“injury, lesion”), Middle Low German sêrnisse, sêrenisse (“wounding, injury, distress, need”).

## Easily confused with
- **softness** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/softness-vs-soreness)
- **scoreless** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/scoreless-vs-soreness)
- **shortness** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/shortness-vs-soreness)
- **sorceress** (https://plainspell.com/en/vs/sorceress-vs-soreness)

## Common misspellings (10)
`osreness`, `soerness`, `soreenss`, `sorenes`, `sorenness`, `sorenses`, `sorneess`, `sorreness`, `sroeness`, `ssoreness`

## Source
Compiled from Wiktionary via kaikki.org (CC BY-SA). Data vintage: 2026-05-06.
Canonical page: https://plainspell.com/en/word/soreness