piteous

• POS: Adjective
• HYPHEN: pit=e=ous

CIDE DICTIONARY

piteous, a. [OE. pitous, OF. pitos, F. piteux. See Pity.].

•  Pious; devout.  [1913 Webster]

  "The Lord can deliver piteous men from temptation."  [1913 Webster]
•  Evincing pity, compassion, or sympathy; compassionate; tender.  Pope.  [1913 Webster]

  "She was so charitable and so pitous."  [1913 Webster]
•  Fitted to excite pity or sympathy; wretched; miserable; lamentable; sad; as, a piteous case.  [1913 Webster]

  "The most piteous tale of Lear."  [1913 Webster]
•  Paltry; mean; pitiful.  Milton.  [1913 Webster]

Syn. -- Sorrowful; mournful; affecting; doleful; woeful; rueful; sad; wretched; miserable; pitiable; pitiful; compassionate.

OXFORD DICTIONARY

piteous, adj. deserving or causing pity; wretched.

Derivative

piteously adv. piteousness n.

Etymology

ME pito(u)s etc. f. AF pitous, OF pitos f. Rmc (as PIETY)

THESAURUS

piteous

affecting, afflictive, beseeching, bitter, bleak, cheerless, comfortless, deplorable, depressing, depressive, discomforting, dismal, dismaying, distressful, distressing, doleful, dolorific, dolorogenic, dolorous, dreary, emotional, entreating, grievous, heartrending, imploring, joyless, lamentable, melancholy, miserable, mournful, moving, painful, pathetic, pitiable, pitiful, plaintive, poignant, poor, regrettable, rueful, ruined, sad, saddening, sharp, sore, sorrowful, supplicating, tearful, touching, uncomfortable, woebegone, woeful, wretched

ROGET THESAURUS

piteous

Painfulness

N painfulness, trouble, care, trial, affliction, infliction, blow, stroke, burden, load, curse, bitter pill, bitter draught, waters of bitterness, annoyance, grievance, nuisance, vexation, mortification, sickener, bore, bother, pother, hot water, sea of troubles, hornet's nest, plague, pest, cancer, ulcer, sting, thorn, canker, scorpion, dagger, scourge, carking care, canker worm of care, mishap, misfortune, desagrement, esclandre, rub, source of irritation, source of annoyance, wound, open sore, sore subject, skeleton in the closet, thorn in the flesh, thorn in one's side, where the shoe pinches, gall and wormwood, sorry sight, heavy news, provocation, affront, head and front of one's offending, infestation, molestation, malignity, causing pain, hurting, hurtful, painful, dolorific, dolorous, unpleasant, unpleasing, displeasing, disagreeable, unpalatable, bitter, distasteful, uninviting, unwelcome, undesirable, undesired, obnoxious, unacceptable, unpopular, thankless, unsatisfactory, untoward, unlucky, uncomfortable, distressing, afflicting, afflictive, joyless, cheerless, comfortless, dismal, disheartening, depressing, depressive, dreary, melancholy, grievous, piteous, woeful, rueful, mournful, deplorable, pitiable, lamentable, sad, affecting, touching, pathetic, irritating, provoking, stinging, annoying, aggravating, mortifying, galling, unaccommodating, invidious, vexatious, troublesome, tiresome, irksome, wearisome, plaguing, plaguy, awkward, importunate, teasing, pestering, bothering, harassing, worrying, tormenting, carking, intolerable, insufferable, insupportable, unbearable, unendurable, past bearing, not to be borne, not to be endured, more than flesh and blood can bear, enough to drive one mad, enough to provoke a saint, enough to make a parson swear, enough to gag a maggot, shocking, terrific, grim, appalling, crushing, dreadful, fearful, frightful, thrilling, tremendous, dire, heart-breaking, heart-rending, heart-wounding, heart-corroding, heart-sickening, harrowing, rending, odious, hateful, execrable, repulsive, repellent, abhorrent, horrid, horrible, horrific, horrifying, offensive, nauseous, nauseating, disgusting, sickening, revolting, nasty, loathsome, loathful, fulsome, vile, hideous, sharp, acute, sore, severe, grave, hard, harsh, cruel, biting, caustic, cutting, corroding, consuming, racking, excruciating, searching, grinding, grating, agonizing, envenomed, catheretic, pyrotic, ruinous, disastrous, calamitous, tragical, desolating, withering, burdensome, onerous, oppressive, cumbrous, cumbersome, painfully, with pain, deuced, Int, hinc illae lachrymae!, surgit amari aliquid, the place being too hot to hold one, the iron entering into the soul, he jests at scars that never felt a wound, I must be cruel only to be kind, what deep wounds ever closed without a scar?.