sob story
noun
Simple meaning
A sentimental story of personal distress.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
sahbstawreeSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈsɑbsˈtɔɹi
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
A sentimental story (or drama) of personal distress; designed to arouse sympathy
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
This meaning: A sentimental story (or drama) of personal distress; designed to arouse sympathy
Used this way, sob story is a specialist word that can pull warm or cold depending on the sentence. It turns up most in technical or specialist writing contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Mixed
- Formality
- Specialist/technical
- Intensity
- Moderate
- How common
- Specialized
- Connotation
- Sentimental and reflective
- Usage feel
- Clinical and detached
Where it naturally appears
- Technical/specialist writing
Usage note
In general conversation this sense usually needs explaining — outside its field, people reach for a plainer word.
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.