The Collaborative International Dictionary
Pathetic \Pa*thet"ic\, a. [L. patheticus, Gr. ?, fr. ?, ?, to suffer: cf. F. path['e]tique. See Pathos.]
Expressing or showing anger; passionate. [Obs.]
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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.
Usage examples of "the pathetic".
One would almost feel some morsels of pity for the pathetic creatures who tried to stand in my way.
Notwithstanding the pathetic organ, the choir is spectacular, and builds to a stirring six-part-harmony climax as Waterhouse ambles up the aisle, wondering whether his erection is visible.
He did not want to see Hedrigall bending down and with a gruff tenderness picking up the pathetic remains, cradling the skin-and-bone man and walking out of the village, to bury him.
We have all thoughtfully--or unthoughtfully--read the pathetic story of the years of plenty and the years of famine in Egypt, and how Joseph, with that opportunity, made a corner in broken hearts, and the crusts of the poor, and human liberty--a corner whereby he took a nation's money all away, to the last penny.
She stared at the pathetic woman whose face was still tense with fear.
As for Holland, he begged me to let him take care of you, the pathetic creature.
But justice herself (if we may use the pathetic expression of Ammianus ^63) appeared to weep over the fate of Ursulus, the treasurer of the empire.
He thought back to the Metropolitan Museum of Art: to the pathetic bit of dress, the desperate note.
The policewoman's flecked eyes stared coldly at the pathetic creature.
Even in the pathetic league they formed for studio children Sparky saw little point in playing.
Usually, a dead animal, lax and lolling, seems to weigh more than a live one, but with the loss of its life, the pathetic condition of the little cat was revealed.