All 5 Uses of
pathetic
in
Beastly, by Alex Flinn
- If she pitied me, she might think that I was some pathetic creature who was going to try to drag her off and force her to be mine, like the Phantom of the Opera.
Part 4 *pathetic = pitiful (arousing pity)
- Probably had some pathetic crush on me.†
Part 1
- But that was pathetic.†
Part 2
- This sounded so lame I almost had to cover my ears against its patheticness.†
Part 3
- It was too pathetic to say it was what I'd hoped, that I had no friends, and I wanted—so wanted—her to talk to me, to be with me, to say something that would make me laugh and bring me back to the real world, even if it was nothing more.†
Part 4
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) 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.