regretful

1 expressing or suggesting mourning gave me a regretful look when I told him we had to move my mother to a nursing home Synonyms aching, agonized, anguished, bemoaning, bewailing, bitter, deploring, doleful, dolesome, dolorous, funeral, grieving, heartbroken, lamentable, lugubrious, plaintive, plangent, mournful, rueful, sorrowful, sorry, wailing, weeping, woefulRelated Words dirgelike, elegiac (also elegiacal), melancholy; dejected, depressed, despondent, disconsolate, dispirited, downcast, downhearted, heartsick, heartsore, inconsolable, tearful; brokenhearted, careworn, crestfallen, downcast, downhearted, forlorn, gloomy, glum, low-spirited, miserable, sad, triste, unhappy, woebegone; bawling, crying, groaning, howling, keening, moaning, yammering; bleeding, suffering; black, bleak, cheerless, comfortless, dark, darkening, desolate, dismal, dreary, funereal, gloomy, glum, gray (also grey), joyless, low, miserable, moody, morbid, morose, pathetic, pessimistic, piteous, saturnine, somber (or sombre), sullen, wretchedNear Antonyms delighted, exulting, glorying, happy, joyful, rejoicing, triumphant; bright, cheerful, cheering, cheery; laughing, smiling; blissful, blithe, blithesome, buoyant, jocund, jolly, joyous, lighthearted, merry, mirthful; encouraging, hopeful, optimistic; ecstatic, elated, euphoric, exhilarated, giddy, heady, rapturous, rhapsodic (also rhapsodical)

2 feeling sorrow for a wrong that one has done was truly regretful that she had yelled at him Synonyms apologetic, compunctious, penitent, contrite, remorseful, repentant, rueful, sorryRelated Words ashamed, shamefaced, sheepish; dolorous, grieving, lugubrious, mournful, plaintive, sorrowful, wailing, weeping, woefulNear Antonyms compassionless, cruel, merciless, pitiless, ruthless, unmerciful; shameless, unashamedAntonyms impenitent, remorseless, unapologetic, unrepentant