• (RP) enPR: sô, IPA: /sɔː/
• (America) enPR: sôr, IPA: /sɔɹ/
• (rhotic, horse-hoarse) enPR: sōr, IPA: /so(ː)ɹ/
• (nonrhotic, horse-hoarse) IPA: /soə/

sore (comparative sorer, superlative sorest)

1. Causing pain or discomfort; painfully sensitive.

   Her feet were sore from walking so far.

2. Sensitive; tender; easily pained, grieved, or vexed; very susceptible of irritation.

   • Malice and hatred are very fretting and vexatious, and apt to make our minds sore and uneasy.

3. Dire; distressing.

   The school was in sore need of textbooks, theirs having been ruined in the flood.

4. (informal) Feeling animosity towards someone; annoyed or angered.

   Joe was sore at Bob for beating him at checkers.

5. (obsolete) Criminal; wrong; evil.
   • c. 1599-1602, William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act V Scene i:

     […] and your water is a sore decayer of your whoreson dead body.

• French: douloureux
• German: wund, weh, schlimm, entzündet
• Italian: doloroso, dolorante, infiammato, fa male ...is sore
• Portuguese: doloroso
• Russian: больно́й
• Spanish: dolorido

• German: empfindlich

• French: pénible, désespérant
• German: verzweifelt, händeringend
• Russian: отча́янный

sore (not comparable)

1. (archaic) Very, excessively, extremely (of something bad).
   • 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), imprinted at London: By Robert Barker, […], OCLC 964384981 ↗, Joshua 9:24 ↗:

     And they answered Ioshua, and said, Because it was certainely told thy seruants, how that the Lord thy God commanded his seruant Moses to giue you all the land, and to destroy all the inhabitants of the land from before you, therefore we were sore afraid of our liues because of you, and haue done this thing.

   • 1859, Alfred Tennyson, “Elaine”, in Idylls of the King, London: Edward Moxon & Co., […], OCLC 911789798 ↗, pages 174–175 ↗:

     But on that day when Lancelot fled the lists, / His party, knights of utmost North and West, / Lords of waste marches, kings of desolate isles, / Came round their great Pendragon, saying to him / 'Lo, Sire, our knight thro' whom we won the day / Hath gone sore wounded, and hath left his prize / Untaken, crying that his prize is death.'

   • 1879, R[ichard] J[efferies], “The Old Punt: A Curious ‘Turnpike’”, in The Amateur Poacher, London: Smith, Elder, & Co., […], OCLC 752825175 ↗, pages 19–20 ↗:

     Orion hit a rabbit once; but though sore wounded it got to the bury, and, struggling in, the arrow caught the side of the hole and was drawn out.

2. Sorely.
   • 1885, Richard F. Burton, The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night:

     And indeed I blamed myself and sore repented me of having taken compassion on him and continued in this condition, suffering fatigue not to be described, […]

   • 1919, Edgar Rice Burroughs, [https://web.archive.org/web/20141009081751/http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/ot2www-pubeng?specfile=%2Ftexts%2Fenglish%2Fmodeng%2Fpublicsearch%2Fmodengpub.o2w Jungle Tales of Tarzan]:

     [… they] were often sore pressed to follow the trail at all, and at best were so delayed that in the afternoon of the second day, they still had not overhauled the fugitive.

sore (plural sores)

1. An injured, infected, inflamed or diseased patch of skin.

   They put ointment and a bandage on the sore.

2. Grief; affliction; trouble; difficulty.
   • 1822, [Walter Scott], Peveril of the Peak. [...] In Four Volumes, volume (please specify ), Edinburgh: Printed for Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co., OCLC 2392685 ↗:

• French: plaie
• Italian: piaga, ferita, ulcera
• Portuguese: chaga
• Russian: боля́чка
• Spanish: llaga

sore (sores, present participle soring; past and past participle sored)

1. (transitive) To mutilate the legs or feet of (a horse) in order to induce a particular gait.

sore (plural sores)

1. A group of ducks on land.

sore (plural sores)

1. A young hawk or falcon in its first year.
2. A young buck in its fourth year.