S O R 
S O R 
—Violent with pain; afflictively vehement. See Sore, ad¬ 
verb. 
Threescore and ten I can remember well, 
Within the volume of which time I’ve seen 
■Hours dreadful, and things strange; but this sore night 
Hath trifled former knowings. Shakspeare. 
Criminal. Out of use. 
To lapse in fulness 
Is sorer than to lie for need; and falsehood 
Is worse in kings than beggars. Shakspeare. 
SORE, adv. [This the etymologists derive from seer, 
Teut. Germ, ser or sehrk] Intensely ; in a great degree. 
This worthy Jason sore alongeth 
To see the strange regions. Gower. 
Good men delight sore when they hear of virtuous men. 
Thorpe. —With painful or dangerous vehemence; a very 
painful degree; with afflictive violence or pertinacity. It is 
now little Used. 
The knight, then lightly leaping to the prey. 
With mortal steel him smote again so sore, 
That headless his unwieldy body lay. Spenser. 
To SORE, v. a. To wound; to make sore. The 
following is the reading of Spenser’s first edition in 1590, 
and no doubt the true one. Others read bor'd. 
The wyde wound— 
Was closed up, as it had not been sor'd. Spenser. 
SORE, [sor-falcon, Fr. a soare- hawk, Cotgrave; 
from saur, brown.] A hawk of the first year.—The dis¬ 
tinction of eyes and ramage hawks, of sores and enter- 
mewers. Sir T. Brown. —A buck of the fourth year [from 
saur, Fr.]—A buck is the first year a fawn; the second year, 
a pricket, the third year, a sorrell; and the fourth year, a 
soare. Return from Parnassus. 
SORE, a town of France, department of the Landes. 
Population 1500. 
SORECABA, a river of Brazil, which empties itself, in 
Lat. 23. 31. S. into the Tiete, which carries its waters to the 
great river Parana. There is a town of the same name on 
its banks; and in the neighbourhood are several mountains, 
abounding in rich oxide of iron, which, on smelting, has 
been found of good quality. 
SO'REHON, or Sorn, s. [Irish and Scottish.] A kind 
of arbitrary exaction or servile tenure, formerly ip Scotland, 
as likewise in Ireland. Whenever a chieftain had a mind to 
revel, he come down among the tenants with his followers, 
by way of contempt called in the lowlands giliwitftts, and 
lived on free quarters; so that ever since, when a person ob¬ 
trudes himself upon another, stays at his house, and hangs 
upon him for bed and board, he is said to sorn, or be a 
sorner, Macbean. —They exact upon them all kinds of 
services; yea, and the very wild exactions, coignie, livery, 
and sorehon; by which they poll and utterly undo the poor 
tenants and freeholders under them. Spenser. 
SO'REL, or SO'RREL, adj. {saur, Fr.] Reddish; in¬ 
clining to a red colour: as a sorrel horse.—To redden her¬ 
rings, lay them on hurdles in a close room, and there smoke 
them with the dried leaves of elm or oak, or with tanner’s 
bark, until they have gotten their sorrel hue. Cotgrave. 
SO'REL, or So'rrei,, s. [dimin. of sore, from saur, Fr.] 
A buck of the third year. See Sore. —I am but a mere 
sorell, my head’s not hardened yet. A Christian turned 
Turk. 
SOREL, a seigniory of Lower Canada, in the south 
side of the St. Lawrence, in the county of Richlieu and Surry. 
SOREL, or William Henry, a town of Lower Canada, 
pleasantly situated at the confluence of the Richlieu, 
Chambly, or Sorel river, with the St. Lawrence. It stands 
on the site of a fort, built in the year 1665, by order of M. 
de Tracy, similar to those erected in the neighbourhood of 
Montreal, &c., as a defence against the incursions of the 
Indians, and which received its name from Sorel, a captain 
Vol. XXIII. No. 1576. 
361 
of engineers, who superintended its construction. The plan 
of it covers about 120 acres of ground, although at present 
the number of houses does not much exceed 150, exclusive 
of stores, barracks, and government buildings. It is laid 
out with regularity, the streets intersecting each other at right 
angles, and having in the centre a square 170 yards on each 
side. The dwelling-houses are of wood, substantially and 
well constructed, but the Protestant and the Catholic 
churches are both stone buildings. There are eight principal 
streets, that, like the town itself, are named after different 
branches of the royal family. The whole population is 
about 1500. Before the town, the bank of the Richlieu is 
from ten to twelve feet high, having near the point two small 
wharfs or landing places. The river is here two hundred 
and fifty yards broad, with from two and a half to five and 
a half fathoms of water. On the opposite shore there are 
convenient places for building vessels, and where some of 
large tonnage have been constructed; but latterly, this 
branch of trade has not been so much attended to here as it 
used to be. A small distance from a little rivulet, to the 
southward of the place, is a blockhouse and an hospital; 
and a little further on, a good wooden building, with out¬ 
houses, gardens, &c., called the government-house, serving 
as a residence for the commanding officer of the troops 
stationed here, usually one or two companies of infantry. 
The present town of Sorel was begun about the year 1785, 
when some loyalists and disbanded soldiers settled at it; 
and it still continues to be the residence of many old military 
servants of the crown, who exist upon pensions allowed 
them by government. Some trade is carried on here; but 
not so much as it might be supposed its situation at the 
junction of two navigable rivers would command. Lat. 46. 
5. N. long. 72. 55. W. 
SOREL RIVER. See Richlieu. 
SO’RELY, adv. With a great degree of pain or distress. 
—Here’s the smell of the blood still; all the perfumes of 
Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh! oh! oh!— 
What a sigh is there? the heart is sorely overcharged. 
Shakspeare. —With vehemence dangerous or afflictive. 
I have done ill, 
Of which I do accuse myself so sorely. 
That I will enjoy no more. Shakspeare. 
SO'RENESS, s. [I'aepnyjqe, Sax.] Tenderness of a 
hurt.—My foot began to swell, and the pain asswaged, 
though it left such a soreness, that I could hardly suffer 
the clothes of my bed. Temple. 
SOREX, or Shrew, in Natural History, a genus of the 
Mammalia Feres class and order, of which the following is 
the Generic Character: there are two upper fore-teeth, which 
are long and bifid; the lower fore-teeth are from two to four, 
the intermediate ones are shorter; there are several tusks on 
each side; the grinders cuspidate. Seventeen species are 
enumerated in Gmelin’s last edition of the Linnaean genera, 
which are as follow — 
1. Sorex cristatus, or crested shrew.—The nostrils in this 
species are carunculafe : the tail is short.—It inhabits North 
America.—The whole animal is four inches long, and the 
tail an inch and a quarter: it feeds on roots, and resembles 
the mole in its face and snout. 
2. Sorex minutus, or minute shrew.—The snout of this 
species is very long, and it has no tail.—It inhabits Siberia, in 
moist woods, under the roots of trees ; it makes its nest of 
lichen, collects seeds, runs and burrows quickly ; it bites, has 
the voice of a bat, and weighs about a drachm. 
3. Sorex aquaticus, or aquatic shrew.—In this species, the 
hind-feet are palmate; fore feet are white; the tail is short 
and white.—It is an inhabitant of North America, and is the 
size of a mole. 
4. Sorex moschatus. Feet palmate, tail flattened, thickest 
in the middle.—This is called the musky shrew ; it inhabits 
about the lakes of Volga and Tanais; burrows under the 
banks, with an entrance into the water; feeds on flags and 
fish; the body of the animal is seven inches long, and the 
tail is eight. 
4 Z 
5. Sorex 
