PATHETIC

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does pathetic mean? 

• PATHETIC (adjective)
  The adjective PATHETIC has 3 senses:

1. deserving or inciting pity

2. inspiring mixed contempt and pity

3. inspiring scornful pity

  Familiarity information: PATHETIC used as an adjective is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PATHETIC (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Deserving or inciting pity

Synonyms:

hapless; miserable; misfortunate; pathetic; piteous; pitiable; pitiful; poor; wretched

Context example:

a wretched life

Similar:

unfortunate (not favored by fortune; marked or accompanied by or resulting in ill fortune)

Derivation:

pathos (a feeling of sympathy and sorrow for the misfortunes of others)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Inspiring mixed contempt and pity

Synonyms:

pathetic; pitiable; pitiful

Context example:

pitiful exhibition of cowardice

Similar:

contemptible (deserving of contempt or scorn)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Inspiring scornful pity

Synonyms:

pathetic; ridiculous; silly

Context example:

how silly an ardent and unsuccessful wooer can be especially if he is getting on in years

Similar:

undignified (lacking dignity)

 Context examples 

“No, no, no!” returned the Doctor, in a tone of most pathetic grief.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Jo tried to look pathetic but must have failed, for Mr. Laurence began to laugh, and she knew the day was won.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

The separation between her and her family was rather noisy than pathetic.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

His eloquence is forcible and touching; nor can I hear him, when he relates a pathetic incident or endeavours to move the passions of pity or love, without tears.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

There was something pathetic in it that touched me; it also gave me a lesson, for it seemed that before me was a child—only a child, though the features were worn, and the stubble on the jaws was white.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

The real circumstances of this pathetic piece of family history were, that the Musgroves had had the ill fortune of a very troublesome, hopeless son; and the good fortune to lose him before he reached his twentieth year; that he had been sent to sea because he was stupid and unmanageable on shore; that he had been very little cared for at any time by his family, though quite as much as he deserved; seldom heard of, and scarcely at all regretted, when the intelligence of his death abroad had worked its way to Uppercross, two years before.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

If the part is trifling she will have more credit in making something of it; and if she is so desperately bent against everything humorous, let her take Cottager's speeches instead of Cottager's wife's, and so change the parts all through; he is solemn and pathetic enough, I am sure.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

A rather pathetic figure, the Lady Frances, a beautiful woman, still in fresh middle age, and yet, by a strange change, the last derelict of what only twenty years ago was a goodly fleet.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He caught a glimpse of that pathetic figure of him, so long ago, a self-conscious savage, sprouting sweat at every pore in an agony of apprehension, puzzled by the bewildering minutiae of eating-implements, tortured by the ogre of a servant, striving at a leap to live at such dizzy social altitude, and deciding in the end to be frankly himself, pretending no knowledge and no polish he did not possess.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

"Yes, it's late, and I'm so tired." Jo's voice was more pathetic than she knew.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)