Some ſay that Rauens foſter forlorne children, / The vvhilſt their ovvne birds famiſh in their neſts: / Oh be to me though thy hard hart ſay no, / Nothing ſo kinde but ſomething pittifull.c. 1588–1593 (date written), [William Shakespeare], The Most Lamentable Romaine Tragedie of Titus Andronicus: […] (First Quarto), London: […] Iohn Danter, and are to be sold by Edward White & Thomas Millington, […], published 1594, →OCLC, [Act II, scene iii], signature D3, verso:
Straightway, he now goes on to make a full confession; whereupon the mariners became more and more appalled, but still are pitiful.1851 November 14, Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC:
Etymology From Middle English pityful, piteful, piteeful. By surface analysis, pit(i) + -ful.
1
Colloquial, Dialectal In a pitiful manner; pitifully; piteously; pathetically.
‘She followed ’em, cryin’ pitiful, to the old boat on the Wall[.]’1906, Rudyard Kipling, Puck of Pook's Hill, London: Penguin Books, published 1994, page 194: