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]

English

Pronunciation

• /ˈpɪtəfl̩/
• SAMPA /"pIt@f=l/

Adjective

1. So appalling or sad that one feels or should feel sorry for it; eliciting pity.

   Scotland has a pitiful climate.

2. Very small (of an amount).

   A pitiful number of students bothered to turn up.

Related terms

• pitiable
• pity

Translations

• Dutch: zielig, triest (1)
• French: pitoyable
• Hebrew: מעורר רחמים /meʿorer rɑḥɑmim/, עלוב
• Indonesian: kasihan
• Italian: pietoso
• Spanish: lamentable

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