1. 1遺憾地、可惜地(正式用語,相當於較文雅的「很遺憾」)

    The adverb of regrettable. It has two jobs, and they feel quite different.

    Most of the time it sits at the front of a sentence and comments on the whole thing that follows — 'Regrettably, the concert has been cancelled.' Here it means roughly 'sadly' or 'unfortunately': the speaker is saying 'I'm sorry to report this' before delivering bad news. Used this way it is a , a small formal cushion placed under an unwelcome fact. Newspapers, letters, and announcements love it.

    Its other job is smaller and more literal — sitting next to an adjective to mean 'to a degree one wishes were otherwise': 'regrettably few people applied', 'a regrettably common problem'. Here it works like 'unfortunately' modifying a quantity.

    Register matters. This is a formal word. In conversation you would say 'unfortunately', 'sadly', or just 'sorry, but —'. If a friend asks you to dinner and you begin 'Regrettably, I have other plans', you will sound like a letter from a bank. That distance is sometimes exactly what you want — in a polite refusal to someone senior, in an email you need to keep professional — but choose it on purpose.

組成regrettable + -ly. The -ly ending, from Old English -līċe, is the ordinary way English turns an adjective into an adverb. Note that the -le of regrettable becomes -ly, not -lely.

同家族的字

  • regrettablethe adjective it comes from
  • regretthe root word underneath both
  • unfortunatelynot related by root, but its everyday equivalent — worth learning as a pair

原始詞典資料1 筆記錄

以下是外部詞典記錄的用法,摘錄並精簡格式,我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的;有些用法可能上面已經講過了。

regrettablyadv

  • 1

    In a manner inspiring or deserving regret.

    • Your exam results are regrettably poor: you should regretfully reflect on all the time wasted reading comics.

摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary,已精簡格式;依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用,改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。