Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Sympathy and sorrow aroused by the misfortune or suffering of another.
- noun A matter of regret.
- intransitive verb To feel pity for or on account of.
- intransitive verb To feel pity.
- idiom (have/take) To show compassion for.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To excite pity in; fill with pity or compassion: used impersonally.
- To feel pity or compassion for; compassionate; commiserate: as, to
pity the blind or their misfortune; to pity the oppressed. - Synonyms To sympathize with, feel for. See
pity , n. - To be compassionate; exercise pity.
- noun Sympathetic sorrow for the suffering with another; a feeling which inspires one to relieve the suffering of another.
- noun An appeal for pity.
- noun A cause, matter, or source, of regret or grief; a thing to be regretted: as, it is a pity you lost it; it is a thousand pities that it should be so.
- noun Synonyms pity, Compassion, Commiseration, Sympathy, condolence. Pity is the only one of these words that allows even a tinge of contempt; pity and Compassion come from one who is felt to be so far superior. Sympathy, on the other hand, puts the sufferer and the one sympathizing with him upon an equality by their fellow-feeling. Compassion does not keep so near its derivation; it is deep tenderness of feeling for one who is suffering. Sympathy is equal to compassion in its expression of tenderness. Commiseration is, by derivation, sharing another's misery; condolence is sharing another's grief. Commiseration may and condolence must stand for the communication to another of one's feelings of sorrow for his case. It is some comfort of receive commiseration or condolence; it gives one strength to receive sympathy from a loving heart; it is irksome to need compassion; it galls us to be pitied. Sympathy does not necessarily imply more than kinship of feeling. See also the quotations under condolence.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- intransitive verb To be compassionate; to show pity.
- transitive verb To feel pity or compassion for; to have sympathy with; to compassionate; to commiserate; to have tender feelings toward (any one), awakened by a knowledge of suffering.
- transitive verb obsolete To move to pity; -- used impersonally.
- noun obsolete Piety.
- noun A feeling for the sufferings or distresses of another or others; sympathy with the grief or misery of another; compassion; fellow-feeling; commiseration.
- noun A reason or cause of pity, grief, or regret; a thing to be regretted.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun uncountable A feeling of
sympathy at themisfortune orsuffering of someone or something. - noun Something
regrettable . - verb transitive To feel pity for (someone or something).
- interjection Short form of
what a pity .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a feeling of sympathy and sorrow for the misfortunes of others
- noun an unfortunate development
- noun the humane quality of understanding the suffering of others and wanting to do something about it
- verb share the suffering of
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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And those wretched remains of strength and youth, those bruised and battered men, looked with pity, yes, _with pity_, at our train.
Menschen im Krieg. English Andreas Latzko 1909
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E. LYONS: Well, it's either a smile and have him -- or what I call a pity party all day long.
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That pity is diluted by the fact that he allegedly ripped off the Government by more than $400,000, although he would have been entitled to some of that by virtue of his age.
ARTHUR REX CRANE 2010
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What it does do though, and it's a pity, is it says to people who have got significant private financial involvements that there's a pretty big cost involved in taking on public office.
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The pity is that it probably was up until after 2000 and a blatantly dishonest, arrogantly self-focused, irresponsible and unconscionable sociopath was elected president and we see what that cost us.
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The only pity is there are so many brianwashed morons like YOU still stubbornly holding on to your delusional fantasies because you prefer them to reality.
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The pity is it took an outrageous, bigoted crack by him for NPR to do what it should have done a long time ago.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson: NPR Should Have Booted Williams for His Fraudulent Liberalism Earl Ofari Hutchinson 2010
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Complaint Department: What a pity is it that I, so aged and crafty, am ignorant of this young upstart who haunts my every step!
[AKICILJ] for forty days and forty night they rode through red blood to the knee ellen_kushner 2009
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The pity is they could not also see that the regime that was deposed was far from democratic, even though it had the support of most ethnic Fijians.
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Giving you pity is like giving a crackwhore more rocks.
PossibleUnderscore commented on the word pity
More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us.
-George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss
July 27, 2009