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Disappointment vs Regret - What's the difference?

disappointment | regret |

Regret is a derived term of disappointment.



As nouns the difference between disappointment and regret

is that disappointment is the emotion felt when a strongly held expectation is not met while 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 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.

disappointment

English

Noun

(en noun)
  • (uncountable) The emotion felt when a strongly held expectation is not met.
    • Choking back his disappointment after his own team's splendid wins against Liverpool and Aston Villa, he said: "I've got to be humble and say we were beaten by a very good side."'' — ''Today , News Group Newspapers Ltd, 1992
  • (countable) A circumstance in which a strongly held expectation is not met.
  • * {{quote-news
    • , year=2012 , date=May 5 , author=Phil McNulty , title=Chelsea 2-1 Liverpool , work=BBC Sport citation , page= , passage=For Liverpool, their season will now be regarded as a relative disappointment after failure to add the FA Cup to the Carling Cup and not mounting a challenge to reach the Champions League places.}}
    As the disappointments crowded in — the economy, Rhodesia, strife within the trade-union movement — tried the expedient of a semi-formal inner Cabinet, or Parliamentary Committee, as he misleadingly liked to call it.'' — ''Cabinet , Hennessy, Peter, Basil Blackwell Ltd, 1990

    Related terms

    * disappoint

    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

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