Pitiful

4 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Pitiful \Pit"i*ful\, a.
     1. Full of pity; tender-hearted; compassionate; kind;
        merciful; sympathetic.
        [1913 Webster]
  
              The Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy.


                                                    --James v. 11.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     2. Piteous; lamentable; eliciting compassion.
        [1913 Webster]
  
              A thing, indeed, very pitiful and horrible.
                                                    --Spenser.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     3. To be pitied for littleness or meanness; miserable;
        paltry; contemptible; despicable.
        [1913 Webster]
  
              That's villainous, and shows a most pitiful ambition
              in the fool that uses it.             --Shak.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     Syn: Despicable; mean; paltry. See {Contemptible}.
          [1913 Webster] -- {Pit"i*ful*ly}, adv. --
          {Pit"i*ful*ness}, n.
          [1913 Webster]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  pitiful
       adj 1: 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}]

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  118 Moby Thesaurus words for "pitiful":
     abominable, affecting, arrant, atrocious, awful, base, beastly,
     beggarly, beneath contempt, beneath one, blameworthy, brutal,
     cheap, cheesy, common, contemptible, crummy, debasing, degrading,
     demeaning, deplorable, despicable, detestable, dire, disgraceful,
     disgusting, doleful, dreadful, egregious, enormous, fetid, filthy,
     flagrant, foul, fulsome, gaudy, gimcracky, grievous, gross, gutter,
     hateful, heartrending, heinous, horrible, horrid, humiliating,
     humiliative, infamous, infra dig, infra indignitatem,
     insignificant, lamentable, little, loathsome, lousy, mean,
     meretricious, miserable, monstrous, moving, nasty, nefarious,
     noisome, notorious, obnoxious, odious, offensive, opprobrious,
     outrageous, paltry, pathetic, piteous, pitiable, poor, rank,
     regrettable, reprehensible, repulsive, rotten, rubbishy, rueful,
     sad, scandalous, schlock, scrubby, scruffy, scummy, scurvy, scuzzy,
     shabby, shameful, shocking, shoddy, small, sordid, sorry, squalid,
     terrible, too bad, touching, trashy, trifling, trumpery,
     two-for-a-cent, two-for-a-penny, twopenny, twopenny-halfpenny,
     unbecoming, unclean, unimportant, unworthy of one, valueless, vile,
     villainous, woeful, worst, worthless, wretched
  
  

From THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY ((C)1911 Released April 15 1993) [devils]:

  PITIFUL, adj.  The state of an enemy of opponent after an imaginary
  encounter with oneself.