pathetic

Definitions  ·  Examples  ·  Pronunciations  ·  Etymologies  ·  Related  ·  Statistics  ·  Comments  · 
“
These opinions can be best exhibited by quoting a few passages from his book, not consecutive, but taken here and there as best suits the purpose The sublime and the pathetic are the two chief nerves of all genuine poesy.

View all »
Definitions (14)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (3)

  1. adjective Arousing or capable of arousing sympathetic sadness and compassion: "The old, rather shabby room struck her as extraordinarily pathetic” (John Galsworthy).
  2. adjective Arousing or capable of arousing scornful pity.
  3. Syntax Note
    Synonyms: pathetic, pitiful, pitiable, piteous, lamentable
    These adjectives describe what inspires or deserves pity. Something pathetic elicits sympathetic sadness and compassion: "a most earnest . . . entreaty, addressed to you in the most pathetic tones of the voice so dear to you” (Charles Dickens).
    Both pitiful and pitiable apply to what is touchingly sad: "She told a most pitiful story” (Samuel Butler). "The emperor had been in a state of pitiable vacillation” (William Hickling Prescott).
    Sometimes these three terms connote contemptuous pity, as for what is hopelessly inept or inadequate: a school with pathetic academic standards. "To be guided by second-hand conjecture is pitiful” (Jane Austen). "That cold accretion called the world, which, so terrible in the mass, is so unformidable, even pitiable, in its units” (Thomas Hardy).
    Piteous applies to what cries out for pity: "They . . . made piteous lamentation to us to save them” (Daniel Defoe).
    Lamentable suggests the evocation of pity mixed with sorrow: "Tell thou the lamentable tale of me,/And send the hearers weeping to their beds” (Shakespeare).

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (7)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (1)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (3)

Toggle elsewhere links Elsewhere on the web

View all »
Examples

  • These opinions can be best exhibited by quoting a few passages from his book, not consecutive, but taken here and there as best suits the purpose The sublime and the pathetic are the two chief nerves of all genuine poesy. —  A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century
  • Accordingly it will not be possible to represent moral freedom, except by expressing passion, or suffering nature, with the greatest vividness; and the hero of tragedy must first have justified his claim to be a sensuous being before aspiring to our homage as a reasonable being, and making us believe in his strength of mind Therefore the pathetic is the first condition required most strictly in a tragic author, and he is allowed to carry his description of suffering as far as possible, without prejudice to the highest end of his art, that is, without moral freedom being oppressed by it. —  Aesthetical Essays of Frederich Schiller
  • "The sublime and the pathetic are the two chief nerves of all genuine poesy. —  A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century
  • Therefore the pathetic is the first condition required most strictly in a tragic author, and he is allowed to carry his description of suffering as far as possible, without prejudice to the highest end of his art, that is, without moral freedom being oppressed by it. —  Aesthetical Essays of Frederich Schiller
  • What a world of reasonings, not immediately obvious, did the sage of old open to our inquiry, when he said the pathetic was the truest part of the sublime. —  Eugene Aram — Complete
 

Tags

Sign up or sign in to add tags.

Stats

Pathetic has been looked up 363 times, favorited 0 times, listed 27 times, and commented on 0 times.

stop updating
On Twitter

Photos from

flickr images

Add a related word »
Related

Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Allen's Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms

Used in the same context Used in the Same Context

sad ·  pitiful ·  mournful ·  curious ·  foolish ·  amuse
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. French pathétique, from Late Latin pathēticus, from Greek pathētikos, sensitive, from pathētos, liable to suffer, from pathos, suffering; see kwent(h)- in Indo-European roots.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. from Old French pathetique, French pathétique = Spanish patético = Portuguese pathetico = Italian patetico, from Latin patheticus, from Greek παθητικός, subject to feeling or passion, sensitive, also sensuous, impassioned, from παθητός, subject to suffering, from παθεῑν, 2d aorist of πάσχειν, suffer, endure: see pathos.
 

Pronunciations
Record your own »
/pəˈθɛtɪk/
by American Heritage

Charts
frequency chart

Bubble size: how much this word was used in a year

Bubble height: used more or less than expected, vs. all uses evenly distributed

You can expect to see this word a few times a week.

Recent Lookups

careful · Strama · drench · Chebec · herr

Recent Favorites

airship · cloud-shadows · ombrophobous · turncoat · metaplasm

Recent Pronunciations

milosrdenstvi · lichen-covered · futon · sagacity · monoragngocious