What's in a word?

[Arnold Zwicky]

SORRY is historically related to SORE, and early citations seem
merely to mean 'pained, distressed, sad'.  this meaning continues
in exchanges like
  A: I feel awful.
  B: I'm sorry.
(where B is merely expressing empathetic distress) and in "We're
sorry that the pilot died".

the apology/taking-responsibility meaning seems to have developed
out of this (by further "subjectification").  for at least some
current speakers, this meaning is now the primary one, which
leads A in the exchange above to reply to B with
  A: It's not *your* fault.
(my partner and i have had this exchange many times, with him as
A and me as B.  once it's happened, we both remember that our
first instincts as to the interpretation of SORRY are different.
hey, we're both linguists, but we're also jes' plain speakers.)

in any case, a very convenient ambiguity for diplomatic purposes.

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)