sorrow
/ˈsɒɹ.əʊ/
"sorrow" is a 6-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“sorrow” is a moderately-common English word, ranked #10,772 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #10,772
- frequency rank, English
- 6
- letters
- 7
- tracked misspellings
- 5
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - unhappiness, woe
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | sorrow |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈsɒɹ.əʊ/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #10,772 |
| Misspellings tracked | 7 |
| Confusable pairs | 5 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “sorrow” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for sorrow is 6 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈsɒɹ.əʊ/. Corpus data places it at rank #10,772 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. Wiktionary records 2 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 7 likely wrong-spelling variants for sorrow, with forms such as "osrrow", "sororw", and "sorow". Each variant is a distinct typo pattern an edit-distance generator flags, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution. It also participates in 5 confusable-pair relationships, "sorry", "sparrow", "sorrows", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English sorwe, sorow, sorewe, from Old English sorg, sorh (“care, anxiety, sorrow, grief”), from Proto-West Germanic *sorgu, from Proto-Germanic *surgō (compare West Frisian soarch, Dutch zorg, German Sorge, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian sorg), … The correct English form is sorrow, spelled S-O-R-R-O-W.
Definition
- 1unhappiness, woe
- 2(usually in plural) An instance or cause of unhappiness.
Etymology
From Middle English sorwe, sorow, sorewe, from Old English sorg, sorh (“care, anxiety, sorrow, grief”), from Proto-West Germanic *sorgu, from Proto-Germanic *surgō (compare West Frisian soarch, Dutch zorg, German Sorge, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian sorg), from Proto-Indo-European *swergʰ- (“watch over, worry; be ill, suffer”) (compare Old Irish serg (“sickness”), Tocharian B sark (“sickness”), Lithuanian sirgti (“be sick”), Sanskrit सूर्क्षति (sū́rkṣati, “worry”). Despite the similarity in form and meaning, not historically related to sorry and sore.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: osrrow,sororw,sorow,sorroww,sorrwo,srorow,ssorrow
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of sorrow - measured in single-character edits (insert, delete, or substitute a letter). Larger bars are easier to catch; one-edit slips are the sneakiest.
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 English corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “sorrow”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is S-O-R-R-O-W - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ˈsɒɹ.əʊ/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “sorry” - see the side-by-side comparison. sorrow vs sorry
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.