Has the Word "Sorry" Lost All Meaning?

Has the word "Sorry" lost all meaning?

In asking the question I do not suggest that the concept of apology has lost all meaning--just that the word we most associate with the act of apologizing may have ceased to actually convey any sense of an actual apology because of its association with expressions of attitudes that are quite the opposite of apologetic.

Often the usage of the term indicates, rather than genuine contrition, an awareness that others are bothered by what they are doing, but their also having no intention of doing anything whatsoever about it, the utterance all they are going to offer. ("Sorry, but I'm going to persist in my obnoxious behavior and you will just have to deal with that, and consider yourself lucky that I've even said the word.") Sometimes the use of the word is an expression of their feeling that they have nothing to be "sorry" for. ("I'm sorry you feel that way.") Sometimes the utterance of "Sorry" is even a taunt. ("Sorry/Not sorry.")

Indeed, it may be that in situations where we might expect an apology we probably hear "Sorry" used in these ways much, much more often than for the purposes of actually apologizing--so much so that the word's use is enough to set on edge the teeth of a person actually sensitive to words and their meanings (some of whom must still exist).

This seems to me another instance of the corruption of the language--and what has often underlain that, the brutalization of daily life in a society less and less functional (when life expectancy is officially going down, you have pretty inarguable evidence that things are getting worse for people on the whole), and plain and simple illiteracy (with language so little understood, and treated with so little respect).

"What can we do?" some people say faced with such things. As is the case with most of the Big Problems, the answer is "If you mean 'What can we do individually about this large societal problem?' the answer is 'Not much.'" But it may help a little bit if we took some care to use words properly. If we tried to only say "Sorry" when we actually felt "Sorry."