PITIFUL • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Pitiful

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/pˈɪtəfəl/ Listen

adjective

Pitiful adj.

Full of pity; tender-hearted; compassionate; kind; merciful; sympathetic. "The Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy."

Piteous; lamentable; eliciting compassion. "A thing, indeed, very pitiful and horrible."

To be pitied for littleness or meanness; miserable; paltry; contemptible; despicable. "That's villainous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it."

Synonyms: Despicable; mean; paltry. See Contemptible.

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Etymology of 'Pitiful'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Pitiful" Quotes from Famous Books

... Templars. It is here ordained that the Begares, Beguins and Beguines shall be burned. These were a species of heretics 'to whom was imputed all that had formerly been imputed to the primitive Christians.'" So says Voltaire. He does not, like the pitiful blaspheming infidels of to-day, try to heap all this corruption of the dark ages upon primitive Christianity. No! The hull of Voltaire's soul was too great for ...

— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 12, December, 1880 • Various

... inexorable Fate which is set against the realisation of the ideal. The passion of Prometheus sums up the perpetual agony of the human race in its perpetual striving to rise beyond its limitations. The tragic irony of the Greeks is but the expression of the tragedy of passion in its pitiful reaction from hope, the intensity of feeling with which men see desire defeated and ideal unattainable. So, too, in the most intense moments the ...

— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James

... he was disturbed. His philosophy was of the kind that is built up in a country of horses, hard riding, hard work, hard fighting. According to the precepts of that philosophy, Sinclair would have shirked a vital moral duty had he failed to avenge the pitiful death of his brother. ...

— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand

... of Ireland made no answer, for they knew well that at the sound of the sweet pitiful music made by that comely man of the Sidhe, even women in their pains and men that ...

— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory

... Duke of Milan. Not only did he suborn the Parliament of Milan to that end, but he induced the Emperor to confirm him in the title. To this the Emperor consented, seeking to mask the unscrupulous deed by a pitiful sophism. He expounded that the throne of Milan should originally have been Lodovico's, and never Galeazzo Maria's (Gian Galeazzo's father), because the latter was born before Francesco Sforza had ...

— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini

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