Piteously

adv

adv ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adverb
  1. 1
    In a piteous manner; pathetically; plaintively.

    "He had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a door-step."

Adverb
  1. 1
    in a piteous manner wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
agonizinglyawfullybitterlyblatantlycruellydeadly

Example

More examples

"I looked about me and found, close to the forest, a helpless babe, lying quite naked upon the grasses and wailing piteously."

Etymology

From Middle English piteuously, pitously; equivalent to piteous + -ly.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.