pathetic

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“
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.

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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).

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Examples (50)

  • THE LITTLE LARRIKIN Illustrations by A. J. Johnson This is a most delightful, pathetic, and humorous--yet neither too pathetic nor too humorous--story."--_Speaker. —  In the Mist of the Mountains
  • You said that she was a kind of die-away, pathetic, appealing angel. —  Our Casualty, and Other Stories 1918
  • His face was very like that of the young negro in Watteau's drawing--pathetic, wistful, north-bitten. —  The Lost Girl
  • Rebecca, with a cluster of pink and white laurel in her hand, proceeded with a metaphysical and poetical harangue she had previously begun To my eyes," she said, "it has a pathetic air of loneliness--pathetic and yet not exactly sorrowful. —  Lodusky
  • The announcement must be made in the usual way, to the whole convent, at vespers So, in the well-known tones of the Prior of Ashridge,--some time the Earl's confessor, and his frequent visitor,--with the customary request to pray for the repose of the dead, to the ears of Mother Margaret, as she knelt in her stall with the rest, came the sound of the familiar name of Edmund, Earl of Cornwall Very tender and pathetic was the tone in which the intimation was given. —  A Forgotten Hero Not for Him
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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.
 

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/pəˈθɛtɪk/
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