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What is "pitiful"

Crossword clues for pitiful

pitiful
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
pitiful
adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
sight
▪ She was a pitiful sight, still lying where she had fallen, too terrified to move an inch.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ John looked pitiful, his whole body weak with exhaustion.
▪ Margret looked so pitiful, I had to help her.
▪ Stu's bass playing is just pitiful.
▪ the pitiful cries of an injured puppy
▪ The horses were in a pitiful condition, thin and covered with sores.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ But what pitiful towns they were.
▪ Did unemployment, economic depression and the General Strike reduce trade unionism to a pitiful weakness?
▪ How fragile I was, and how pitiful my fears seem now.
▪ I refer, or course, to the pitiful coverage of the Five Nations Championship provided by the corporation.
▪ My Songhai was pitiful, my Mandarin worse.
▪ Serious inroads had now been made into my pitiful cash reserves and tomorrow I would be penniless.
▪ She would not think of the pitiful remains in the corner.
▪ The velocity, the sheer power and the technology of the rocket perhaps makes all the more pitiful our meagre destiny.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Pitiful

Pitiful \Pit"i*ful\, a.

  1. Full of pity; tender-hearted; compassionate; kind; merciful; sympathetic.

    The Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy.
    --James v. 11.

  2. Piteous; lamentable; eliciting compassion.

    A thing, indeed, very pitiful and horrible.
    --Spenser.

  3. 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.
    --Shak.

    Syn: Despicable; mean; paltry. See Contemptible. [1913 Webster] -- Pit"i*ful*ly, adv. -- Pit"i*ful*ness, n.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
pitiful

c.1300, "merciful, compassionate" (implied in pitifully), from pity + -ful. Sense of "exciting or deserving pity" is from mid-15c.; that of "mean, wretched, contemptible" is 1580s. Related: Pitifulness.

Wiktionary
pitiful

a. 1 (context now rare English) Feeling pity; merciful. 2 So appalling or sad that one feels or should feel sorry for it; eliciting pity. 3 Very small (of an amount or number).

WordNet
pitiful

  1. adj. inspiring mixed contempt and pity; "their efforts were pathetic"; "pitiable lack of character"; "pitiful exhibition of cowardice" [syn: pathetic, pitiable]

  2. bad; unfortunate; "my finances were in a deplorable state"; "a lamentable decision"; "her clothes were in sad shape"; "a sorry state of affairs" [syn: deplorable, distressing, lamentable, sad, sorry]

  3. deserving or inciting pity; "a hapless victim"; "miserable victims of war"; "the shabby room struck her as extraordinarily pathetic"- Galsworthy; "piteous appeals for help"; "pitiable homeless children"; "a pitiful fate"; "Oh, you poor thing"; "his poor distorted limbs"; "a wretched life" [syn: hapless, miserable, misfortunate, pathetic, piteous, pitiable, poor, wretched]

Wikipedia
Pitiful (Sick Puppies song)

"Pitiful" is the fourth single released from Sick Puppies' 2007 album Dressed Up as Life. This song talks about how useless someone thinks their life is, to the point where they feel like killing themselves. The person has been looking for a reason to not end it all, but hasn't found one by the end of the song. The subject of the song has abused all the drugs he knows of, with the only exceptions being heroin and cyanide because he "can't afford them yet".

Pitiful

Pitiful may refer to:

  • Mr. Pitiful (song)
  • Pitiful (Sick Puppies song)
  • Poor Poor Pitiful Me (song)
  • You're Pitiful (song)

Usage examples of "pitiful".

His wounded antics, ranging from pitiful entreaties to furious ridicule, had forced her to quit her job.

Rue des Saints-Peres and the Rue du Sepulcre, close by the cross-roads of the Croix-Rouge, where the troops could arrive from so many different points, the Mairie of the Tenth Arrondissement, confined, commanded, and blockaded on every side, was a pitiful citadel for the assailed National Representation.

His medical care is computerized and automated, as is the pitiful education he wants.

The barghest casually tossed Bartholemew and his pitiful weapon across the kitchen and stalked over to the old man.

Slowly I swung it back and forth in the air before me, as if by such a pitiful act I could ward off the maledictions she hurled at me.

I told him then what I thought of him, giving vent to all the accumulated irritation of the past few days: he was, I said, a pitiful mediocrity, a mindless, unimaginative hanger-on, without the seed of an original idea.

Many of the crowded family degenerated, moved across the valley, and merged with the mongrel population which was later to produce the pitiful squatters.

No longer was he required to be hopeless Penner, bankrupt Penner, pitiful, pussy-whipped Penner.

He borrowed some of the most pitiful traits from reality, and recomposed them into a regular nightmare.

To Yasmela, standing white and speechless at the door of her tent, the host seemed a pitiful handful in comparison to the thronging desert horde.

Falling foul of such an unposted hazard would be all the more regrettable, pitiful or even tragic, because the suffering arising from it is needless, and yet, this is simply our lot in life.

Only a few lifetubes had shot out, carrying a pitiful handful of survivors.

A planet abides that life which accepts its whims, but man it rejects, man it seeks to obliterate, pitting the monumental force of its instability against that pitiful life form, driving man forth to seek the stars or die.

By 1880, Chinese immigrants, brought in by the railroads to do the backbreaking labor at pitiful wages, numbered 75,000 in California, almost one-tenth of the population.

Yet she could not believe he was really one of the unfocused pitiful human beings who could never learn any biocontrol at all.