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Piteous
WORDNET DICTIONARY
Adjective Piteous has 1 sense
- piteous(s = adj.all) hapless, miserable, misfortunate, pathetic, pitiable, pitiful, poor, wretched - deserving or inciting pity; "a hapless victim"; "miserable victims of war"; "the shabby room struck her as extraordinarily pathetic"; "piteous appeals for help"; "pitiable homeless children"; "a pitiful fate"; "Oh, you poor thing"; "his poor distorted limbs"; "a wretched life" Derived forms noun pity2, noun pity1
CIDE DICTIONARY
Piteous, a. [OE. pitous, OF. pitos, F. piteux. See Pity.].
- Pious; devout. [1913 Webster]"The Lord can deliver piteous men from temptation." [1913 Webster]
- Evincing pity, compassion, or sympathy; compassionate; tender. Pope. [1913 Webster]"She was so charitable and so pitous." [1913 Webster]
- Fitted to excite pity or sympathy; wretched; miserable; lamentable; sad; as, a piteous case. [1913 Webster]"The most piteous tale of Lear." [1913 Webster]
- Paltry; mean; pitiful. Milton. [1913 Webster]
Syn. -- Sorrowful; mournful; affecting; doleful; woeful; rueful; sad; wretched; miserable; pitiable; pitiful; compassionate.
OXFORD DICTIONARY
Piteous, adj. deserving or causing pity; wretched.
Derivative
piteously adv. piteousness n.
Etymology
ME pito(u)s etc. f. AF pitous, OF pitos f. Rmc (as PIETY)
THESAURUS
Piteous
affecting, afflictive, beseeching, bitter, bleak, cheerless, comfortless, deplorable, depressing, depressive, discomforting, dismal, dismaying, distressful, distressing, doleful, dolorific, dolorogenic, dolorous, dreary, emotional, entreating, grievous, heartrending, imploring, joyless, lamentable, melancholy, miserable, mournful, moving, painful, pathetic, pitiable, pitiful, plaintive, poignant, poor, regrettable, rueful, ruined, sad, saddening, sharp, sore, sorrowful, supplicating, tearful, touching, uncomfortable, woebegone, woeful, wretchedROGET THESAURUS
Piteous
Painfulness
N painfulness, trouble, care, trial, affliction, infliction, blow, stroke, burden, load, curse, bitter pill, bitter draught, waters of bitterness, annoyance, grievance, nuisance, vexation, mortification, sickener, bore, bother, pother, hot water, sea of troubles, hornet's nest, plague, pest, cancer, ulcer, sting, thorn, canker, scorpion, dagger, scourge, carking care, canker worm of care, mishap, misfortune, desagrement, esclandre, rub, source of irritation, source of annoyance, wound, open sore, sore subject, skeleton in the closet, thorn in the flesh, thorn in one's side, where the shoe pinches, gall and wormwood, sorry sight, heavy news, provocation, affront, head and front of one's offending, infestation, molestation, malignity, causing pain, hurting, hurtful, painful, dolorific, dolorous, unpleasant, unpleasing, displeasing, disagreeable, unpalatable, bitter, distasteful, uninviting, unwelcome, undesirable, undesired, obnoxious, unacceptable, unpopular, thankless, unsatisfactory, untoward, unlucky, uncomfortable, distressing, afflicting, afflictive, joyless, cheerless, comfortless, dismal, disheartening, depressing, depressive, dreary, melancholy, grievous, piteous, woeful, rueful, mournful, deplorable, pitiable, lamentable, sad, affecting, touching, pathetic, irritating, provoking, stinging, annoying, aggravating, mortifying, galling, unaccommodating, invidious, vexatious, troublesome, tiresome, irksome, wearisome, plaguing, plaguy, awkward, importunate, teasing, pestering, bothering, harassing, worrying, tormenting, carking, intolerable, insufferable, insupportable, unbearable, unendurable, past bearing, not to be borne, not to be endured, more than flesh and blood can bear, enough to drive one mad, enough to provoke a saint, enough to make a parson swear, enough to gag a maggot, shocking, terrific, grim, appalling, crushing, dreadful, fearful, frightful, thrilling, tremendous, dire, heart-breaking, heart-rending, heart-wounding, heart-corroding, heart-sickening, harrowing, rending, odious, hateful, execrable, repulsive, repellent, abhorrent, horrid, horrible, horrific, horrifying, offensive, nauseous, nauseating, disgusting, sickening, revolting, nasty, loathsome, loathful, fulsome, vile, hideous, sharp, acute, sore, severe, grave, hard, harsh, cruel, biting, caustic, cutting, corroding, consuming, racking, excruciating, searching, grinding, grating, agonizing, envenomed, catheretic, pyrotic, ruinous, disastrous, calamitous, tragical, desolating, withering, burdensome, onerous, oppressive, cumbrous, cumbersome, painfully, with pain, deuced, Int, hinc illae lachrymae!, surgit amari aliquid, the place being too hot to hold one, the iron entering into the soul, he jests at scars that never felt a wound, I must be cruel only to be kind, what deep wounds ever closed without a scar?.
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