Adjacent Words

Pathetic definitions

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Webster's 1828 Dictionary

PATHET'IC
PATHET'ICAL, a. [Gr. passion; to suffer.] Affecting or moving the passions, particularly pity, sorrow, grief or other tender emotion; as a pathetic song or discourse; pathetic expostulation.
No theory of the passions can teach a man to be pathetic.
PATHET'IC, n. Style or manner adapted to awaken the passions, especially tender emotions.
A musician at Venice is said to have so excelled in the pathetic, as to be able to play any of his auditors into distraction.

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

adj
1: 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, pitiful, poor, wretched]
2: inspiring mixed contempt and pity; "their efforts were pathetic"; "pitiable lack of character"; "pitiful exhibition of cowardice" [syn: pathetic, pitiable, pitiful]
3: inspiring scornful pity; "how silly an ardent and unsuccessful wooer can be especially if he is getting on in years"- Dashiell Hammett [syn: pathetic, ridiculous, silly]

Merriam Webster's

adjective Etymology: Middle French or Late Latin; Middle French pathetique, from Late Latin patheticus, from Greek path?tikos capable of feeling, pathetic, from paschein (aorist pathein) to experience, suffer — more at pathos Date: 1598 1. having a capacity to move one to either compassionate or contemptuous pity 2. marked by sorrow or melancholy ; sad 3. pitifully inferior or inadequate <the restaurant's pathetic service> 4. absurd, laughable <a pathetic costume> Synonyms: see moving • pathetical adjective • pathetically adverb

Oxford Reference Dictionary

adj. 1 arousing pity or sadness or contempt. 2 Brit. colloq. miserably inadequate. 3 archaic of the emotions. Phrases and idioms: pathetic fallacy the attribution of human feelings and responses to inanimate things, esp. in art and literature. Derivatives: pathetically adv. Etymology: F pathétique f. LL patheticus f. Gk pathetikos (as PATHOS)

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Pathetic Pa*thet"ic, a. [L. patheticus, Gr. ?, fr. ?, ?, to suffer: cf. F. path['e]tique. See Pathos.] 1. Expressing or showing anger; passionate. [Obs.] 2. Affecting or moving the tender emotions, esp. pity or grief; full of pathos; as, a pathetic song or story. ``Pathetic action.'' --Macaulay. No theory of the passions can teach a man to be pathetic. --E. Porter. Pathetic muscle (Anat.), the superior oblique muscle of the eye. Pathetic nerve (Anat.), the fourth cranial, or trochlear, nerve, which supplies the superior oblique, or pathetic, muscle of the eye. The pathetic, a style or manner adapted to arouse the tender emotions.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

1. If you describe a person or animal as pathetic, you mean that they are sad and weak or helpless, and they make you feel very sorry for them. The small group of onlookers presented a pathetic sight... She now looked small, shrunken and pathetic. ADJ • pathetically She was pathetically thin. ADV 2. If you describe someone or something as pathetic, you mean that they make you feel impatient or angry, often because they are weak or not very good. What pathetic excuses... It's a pound for a small glass of wine, which is pathetic. ADJ [disapproval] • pathetically Five women in a group of 18 people is a pathetically small number. ADV: ADV adj

Soule's Dictionary of English Synonyms

a. Affecting, touching, moving, melting, tender, plaintive.

Moby Thesaurus

affecting, affective, afflictive, beggarly, beneath contempt, bitter, bleak, cheap, cheerless, cheesy, comfortless, common, contemptible, crummy, deplorable, depressing, depressive, despicable, discomforting, dismal, dismaying, distressful, distressing, doleful, dolorific, dolorogenic, dolorous, dreary, emotional, emotive, feeble, gaudy, gimcracky, grievous, heartrending, inadequate, joyless, lamentable, mean, measly, meretricious, miserable, mournful, moving, painful, paltry, petty, piddling, piteous, pitiable, pitiful, plaintive, poignant, poor, puny, regrettable, rubbishy, rueful, sad, saddening, scrubby, scruffy, scummy, scurvy, scuzzy, shabby, sharp, shoddy, sore, sorrowful, sorry, stirring, touching, tragic, trashy, trumpery, two-for-a-cent, two-for-a-penny, twopenny, twopenny-halfpenny, uncomfortable, valueless, vile, woebegone, woeful, worthless, wretched