Other forms: remorseful, remorseless
Remorse is the deep, private pain of knowing you did the harm. Not embarrassment, not regret that things went badly — the specific ache of having been the cause.
It is stronger than regret and it needs a wrong: you regret missing a train, you feel remorse for what you said. It is uncountable, so a remorse is wrong. The phrase to learn is without remorse, meaning coldly and without any sign of caring, and the adjective remorseless has drifted from that into simply relentless: the remorseless rain.
1nounremorseDeep painful regret for something wrong you did.
“He showed no remorse at any point in the trial.”
synonyms: contrition, guilt
re-MORSE → MORSE code
A Morse code key on the table, tapping by itself at three in the morning. Every night the same message, and it is always the thing you said last year.
hooks ontocode
From Latin remordere, to bite back — re, again, and mordere, to bite. Remorse is the thing biting you a second time, long after you did it.
Proto-Indo-European
*(s)merd-
Latin
remordeō — to torment, vex
Medieval Latin
remorsus
Old French
remors
Middle English
remors
English, today
remorse
First attested circa 14th century as Middle English remors, from Old French remors, from Medieval Latin remorsus, from Latin remordeō (“to torment, vex”) literally “to bite back”, from re + mordeō. More at remord.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA