2 Cor. vii. 9.
I am sorry for thee, friend; 't is the duke's pleasure.
Shak.
She entered, were he lief or sorry.
Spenser.
2. Melancholy; dismal; gloomy; mournful. Spenser.
All full of chirking was this sorry place.
Chaucer.
3. Poor; mean; worthless; as, a sorry excuse. "With sorry grace." Chaucer.
Cheeks of sorry grain will serve.
Milton.
Good fruit will sometimes grow on a sorry tree.
Sir W. Scott.
Syn. -- Hurt; afflicted; mortified; vexed; chagrined; melancholy; dismal; poor; mean; pitiful.
||Sors (?), n.; pl. Sortes (#). [L.] A lot; also, a kind of divination ||by means of lots.
Sortes Homericæ or Virgilianæ [L., Homeric or Virgilian lots], a form of divination anciently practiced, which consisted in taking the first passage on which the eye fell, upon opening a volume of Homer or Virgil, or a passage drawn from an urn which several were deposited, as indicating future events, or the proper course to be pursued. In later times the Bible was used for the same purpose by Christians.
Sort (?), n. [F. sorl, L. sors, sortis. See Sort kind.] Chance; lot; destiny. [Obs.]
By aventure, or sort, or cas [chance].
Chaucer.
Let blockish Ajax draw The sort to fight with Hector.
Shak.
<! p. 1374 !>
Sort, n. [F. sorie (cf. It. sorta, sorte), from L. sors, sorti, a lot, part, probably akin to serere to connect. See Series, and cf. Assort, Consort, Resort, Sorcery, Sort lot.] 1. A kind or species; any number or collection of individual persons or things characterized by the same or like qualities; a class or order; as, a sort of men; a sort of horses; a sort of trees; a sort of poems.
2. Manner; form of being or acting.
Which for my part I covet to perform, In sort as through the world I did proclaim.
Spenser.
Flowers, in such sort worn, can neither be smelt nor seen well by those that wear them.
Hooker.
The Gutenberg Webster's Unabridged Dictionary: Section S · The Wunder Library — complete classics, free to read, with narration.