pitiable
adj/ˈpɪti.əbəl/
Etymology From Middle French [Term?], from Old French piteable. By surface analysis, pity + -able.
1
That deserves, evokes or can be given pity; pitiful.
- Mr Poyser had no reason to be ashamed of his leg, and suspected that the growing abuse of top-boots and other fashions tending to disguise the nether limbs, had their origin in a pitiable degeneracy of the human calf.1859, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], “Church”, in Adam Bede […], volume II, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, book second, page 20:
- The faintness of the voice was pitiable and dreadful. It was not the faintness of physical weakness, though confinement and hard fare no doubt had their part in it. Its deplorable peculiarity was, that it was the faintness of solitude and disuse. It was like the last feeble echo of a sound made long and long ago.1859, Charles Dickens, chapter 6, in A Tale of Two Cities:
1 more example
- Fatigued by riding on horseback, bedevilled and begrimed by the ride on manback, he presented a pitiable spectacle, and went on his way to Naples in sad plight.1891, Daniel Ammen, The Old Navy and the New, page 205:
- Derived terms
- pitiableness, pitiably, unpitiable