Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Causing, feeling, or expressing sorrow or regret.
from The Century Dictionary.
- . Full of pity or compassion; pitying.
- Worthy of pity or sorrow; lamentable; pitiable; deplorable; sorry.
- Expressive of regret, sorrow, or misfortune; mournful; sad; melancholy; lugubrious.
- Synonyms Doleful, lugubrious, regretful.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Causing one to rue or lament; woeful; mournful; sorrowful.
- adjective Expressing sorrow.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective Causing, feeling, or expressing
regret orsorrow . - adjective Inspiring
pity orcompassion .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective feeling or expressing pain or sorrow for sins or offenses
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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In fact, it could be the kind of flop that folks around the blogosphere discuss in rueful tones.
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With wry insight, he views the Steins ensconced in rueful domesticity.
The Book of Salt: Summary and book reviews of The Book of Salt by Monique Truong. 2002
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Priscilla, in rueful remembrance of many trips to the dressmaker's.
Just Patty 1911
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(Obviously Shafer disagrees with Barthoff's conclusion that Villages embodies "a certain rueful but forgiving intelligence and, yes, wisdom about the accumulating passages, overt and hidden, of ordinary human existence," but that Walter Berthoff liked this novel while Shafer did not certainly seems an insufficient reason to call Berthoff dishonest.
Book Reviewing 2010
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His expression was rueful as he glanced down at me.
At First Sight CATHERINE HAPKA 2010
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His expression was rueful as he glanced down at me.
At First Sight CATHERINE HAPKA 2010
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When it was finally belching smoke to his satisfaction, he looked at me, and in his eye was what I can only describe as a rueful twinkle.
The Beekeeper's Apprentice King, Laurie R. 2006
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Lochte smiled, the kind of grin that some might call rueful, but for him it was just a chuckle.
unknown title 2009
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Lochte smiled, the kind of grin that some might call rueful, but for him it was just a chuckle.
unknown title 2009
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And through it all he had the quick memory of his mother's companionship, he could recall her rueful looks whenever the eager inaccurate ways, in which he reflected certain ineradicable tendencies of her own, had lost him a school advantage; he could remember her exhortations, with the dash in them of humorous self-reproach which made them so stirring to the child's affection; and he could realise their old far-off life at Murewell, the joys and the worries of it, and see her now gossiping with the village folk, now wearing herself impetuously to death in their service, and now roaming with him over the Surrey heaths in search of all the dirty delectable things in which a boy-naturalist delights.
Robert Elsmere Humphry Ward 1885
ofravens commented on the word rueful
Rueful, most vexed, that tender skin
Should accept so fell a wound
from 'Bucolics,' by Sylvia Plath
April 9, 2008