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pitiful

[pit-i-fuhl]

Example Sentences

adjective

evoking or deserving pity: a pitiful fate.

evoking or deserving contempt by smallness, poor quality, etc.: pitiful attempts.

Archaic. full of pity; compassionate.

Origin:
1400–50; late Middle English; see pity, -ful

Related forms

pit·i·ful·ly, adverb

pit·i·ful·ness, noun

self-pit·i·ful, adjective

self-pit·i·ful·ly, adverb

self-pit·i·ful·ness, noun

EXPAND

un·pit·i·ful, adjective

un·pit·i·ful·ly, adverb

un·pit·i·ful·ness, noun

COLLAPSE

Can be confused: piteous, pitiable, pitiful, pitiless (see synonym note at the current entry).

Synonyms
1. lamentable, deplorable, woeful, pathetic. 1, 2. Pitiful, pitiable, piteous apply to that which excites pity (with compassion or with contempt). That which is pitiful is touching and excites pity or is mean and contemptible: a pitiful leper; a pitiful exhibition of cowardice. Pitiable may mean lamentable, or wretched and paltry: a pitiable hovel. Piteous refers only to that which exhibits suffering and misery, and is therefore heart-rending: piteous poverty. 2. deplorable, mean, low, base, vile, despicable.

Antonyms
1. delightful. 2. honorable.

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
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Pitiful is always a great word to know.

So is gobo. Does it mean:

a screen or mat covered with a dark material for shielding a camera lens from excess light or glare.

a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question.

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Example Sentences

But there are three portable exercising aids that render the usual excuses pitiful.

Your pitiful attempt to be courteous was an abysmal failure.

Peace is holding in troubled north of the country, but the economy there remains in a pitiful state.

EXPAND

But there are three portable exercising aids that render the usual excuses pitiful.

Your pitiful attempt to be courteous was an abysmal failure.

Peace is holding in troubled north of the country, but the economy there remains in a pitiful state.

The numbers of certain subspecies are even more pitiful.

But the testing program the agency plans to use is only a pitiful skeleton of what it needs to be.

It's easy too see these imitators as pitiful and annoying.

The endless bawling of calves being separated from their mothers sounded doubly pitiful today here at the auction block.

The toll-keeper seemed to be also conscious of the touching and pitiful nature of the occasion.

In both countries a lack of capital has produced pitiful fishing fleets.

But they can't because they weigh way too much for the pitiful capacity they hold.

There is only this pitiful handful to report the attack.

The french system is so convoluted that my pitiful attempts of explanations are all drowing in bureaucratic quicksands.

The returns they are getting on their savings look increasingly pitiful.

She is not crazed but touchingly pitiful in the mad scene.

The banks, trying to boost their pitiful returns from commercial banking, are closing branches by the hundred.

Humans have, over the years, been pitiful at predicting the scale of things to come.

Then our borders: our borders are porous and our approaches to knowing whether legal entrants ever leave are pitiful.

They are pitiful cowards who must escape this world.

It is pitiful when a man bears a name for convenience merely, who has earned neither name nor fame.

For unknown reasons, her life's frustrations were projected onto the pitiful state of commercial radio.

Or rather, what a pitiful theme he has chosen in which to cast his figure.

Holden is bewildered, lonely, ludicrous and pitiful.

The camera showed pitiful young campaign volunteers lying comatose on a couch or wandering aimlessly through a park.

Huston lets his cameras show so much of the pitiful plight of the creatures-that the screen is full of shock and the.

Petrita, who sees her life and her dreams slipping away, is alternately pitiful and monstrous.

Broadband coverage in many metropolitan areas is pitiful relative to that elsewhere in the developed world.

Many tell pitiful stories of low self-esteem that began when they were children and worsened as they grew older.

Duff is a pitiful reflection of reckless despair and dark revenge.

In the same regard, the pitiful tabloid media should not be put in such a spotlight.

Boyer to do, except act the injured lover and the pitiful victim of a woman's cold revenge.

China has innovated a precious little, and compared to the size of its economy it is a pitiful level of innovation.

Here the three odd humans carry on with their pitiful hopes, their petty irritations.

The internet is a pitiful resource compared to a well-endowed university with cutting edge facilities, and it will always be.

The parcel of treaties signed here have been portrayed by disappointed advocates as pitiful gutless creatures with no bite.

Yet this was the pitiful fate of sterling yesterday as it suffered its biggest rout on the currency markets for more than a year.

Andrist has not only dug out the facts, he has told a series of dramatic, pitiful and tragic stories.

The pitiful creature in the bed upstairs seemed light years removed from the alert, attractive girl in photographs.

COLLAPSE

Collins

World English Dictionary

pitiful (ˈpɪtɪfʊl)

—*adj*
1.	arousing or deserving pity
2.	arousing or deserving contempt
3.	archaic full of pity or compassion

'pitifully

—*adv*

'pitifulness

—n

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
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Related Words

pitiless forlorn

forlorn

Matching Quote

"If woman alone had suffered under these mistaken traditions [of women's subordination], if she could have borne the evil by herself, it would have been less pitiful, but her brother man, in the laws he created and ignorantly worshipped, has suffered with her. He has lost her highest help; he has crippled the intelligence he needed; he has belittled the very source of his own being and dwarfed the image of his Maker."

-Clara Barton

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