pathetic definition | Dictionary.com

pa⋅thet⋅ic

[puh-thet-ik]

–adjective

1.	causing or evoking pity, sympathetic sadness, sorrow, etc.; pitiful; pitiable: a pathetic letter; a pathetic sight.

2.	affecting or moving the feelings.

3.	pertaining to or caused by the feelings.

4.	miserably or contemptibly inadequate: In return for our investment we get a pathetic three percent interest.

Also, pa⋅thet⋅i⋅cal.

Origin:
1590–1600; < LL pathēticus < Gk pathētikós sensitive equiv. to pathēt(ós) made or liable to suffer (verbid of páschein to suffer + -ikos -ic

Related forms:

pa⋅thet⋅i⋅cal⋅ly, adverb

pa⋅thet⋅i⋅cal⋅ness, noun

Synonyms:
1. plaintive. 2. touching, tender. 3. emotional.

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
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Link To pathetic

pa·thet·ic (pə-thět'ĭk)

adj.

Arousing or capable of arousing sympathetic sadness and compassion: "The old, rather shabby room struck her as extraordinarily pathetic" (John Galsworthy).
Arousing or capable of arousing scornful pity.

[French pathétique, from Late Latin pathēticus, from Greek pathētikos, sensitive, from pathētos, liable to suffer, from pathos, suffering; see k^went(h)- in Indo-European roots.]
pa·thet'i·cal·ly adv.

Synonyms: These adjectives describe what inspires or deserves pity. Something pathetic elicits sympathetic sadness and compassion: "a most earnest . . . entreaty, addressed to you in the most pathetic tones of the voice so dear to you" (Charles Dickens).
Both pitiful and pitiable apply to what is touchingly sad: "She told a most pitiful story" (Samuel Butler). "The emperor had been in a state of pitiable vacillation" (William Hickling Prescott).
Sometimes these three terms connote contemptuous pity, as for what is hopelessly inept or inadequate: a school with pathetic academic standards. "To be guided by second-hand conjecture is pitiful" (Jane Austen). "That cold accretion called the world, which, so terrible in the mass, is so unformidable, even pitiable, in its units" (Thomas Hardy).
Piteous applies to what cries out for pity: "They . . . made piteous lamentation to us to save them" (Daniel Defoe).
Lamentable suggests the evocation of pity mixed with sorrow: "Tell thou the lamentable tale of me,/And send the hearers weeping to their beds" (Shakespeare).

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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Pathetic

Pa*thet"ic\, a. [L. patheticus, Gr. ?, fr. ?, ?, to suffer: cf. F. path['e]tique. See Pathos.]

1. Expressing or showing anger; passionate. [Obs.]

2. Affecting or moving the tender emotions, esp. pity or grief; full of pathos; as, a pathetic song or story. "Pathetic action." --Macaulay.

No theory of the passions can teach a man to be pathetic. --E. Porter.

Pathetic muscle (Anat.), the superior oblique muscle of the eye.

Pathetic nerve (Anat.), the fourth cranial, or trochlear, nerve, which supplies the superior oblique, or pathetic, muscle of the eye.

The pathetic, a style or manner adapted to arouse the tender emotions.

Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.
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Language Translation for : pathetic

Spanish: lastimoso, patético,

German: bemittleidenswert,

Japanese: 哀れな

More Translations »

pathetic

1598, "affecting the emotions, exciting the passions," from M.Fr. pathétique "moving, stirring, affecting" (16c.), from L.L. patheticus, from Gk. pathetikos "sensitive, capable of emotion," from pathetos "liable to suffer," verbal adj. of pathein "to suffer" (see pathos). Meaning "arousing pity, pitiful" is first recorded 1737. Colloquial sense of "so miserable as to be ridiculous" is attested from 1937. Pathetic fallacy (1856, first used by Ruskin) is the attribution of human qualities to inanimate objects.

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