All 8 Uses
pathetic
in
After the First Death
(Auto-generated)
- He had seduced her with his pathetic tale of wandering through the camps as a child and had somehow enlisted her sympathy.
Part 6 *pathetic = pitiful (arousing pity)
- What's this all about?" she demanded, gathering her strength and courage and outrage, not realizing how pathetic she sounded.†
Part 2
- They have a wide range—from a trio involved in arson during a civil rights demonstration back in the Sixties to a pathetic character who threw a homemade bomb on the lawn of the White House.†
Part 5
- With the latest dose of drugs, the children had become a drowsy, dozing, pathetic gathering of arms and legs, heads and shoulders: bodies only, not people.†
Part 6
- Maybe she had another weapon in her small pathetic arsenal.†
Part 6
- Kate thought: This strange, pathetic boy.†
Part 6
- She turned them out, removing her wallet and the pathetic, bunched-up panties.†
Part 8
- The boy looked so forlorn and pathetic and frightened that Miro did not wish to invade his privacy any further.†
Part 10
Definitions:
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(1)
(pathetic as in: Her pathetic look saddened us.) pitiful (arousing pity)
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(2)
(pathetic as in: a pathetic attempt to insult me) very bad -- possibly so bad it is laughable (possibly mixed with some feeling of pity)
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(3)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) Much more rarely, and typically just in classic literature, pathetic can mean "relating to emotions". One fairly modern example is in the book, A Separate Peace, where the expression pathetic fallacy is used to describe the non-rational human tendency to ascribe human emotions to inanimate objects or animals.