Word.ws English Dictionary

pitifully

pitifully adverb: in a pitiful manner.

Adverb

pitifully (comparative more pitifully, superlative most pitifully)

  1. In a pitiful manner.
    • The coral faded even from her lips, till they were as white as Leo's face, and quivered pitifully.1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, “The Balance Turns”, in She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC, page 198

Forms of pitifully

comparativemore pitifully
superlativemost pitifully

Origin of pitifully

From Middle English petefully, petifullie, pyttyfully, pytyffully; equivalent to pitiful + -ly.

Questions about pitifully

What does pitifully mean?
Pitifully means in a pitiful manner.
What part of speech is pitifully?
Pitifully is an adverb.

Words near pitifully in the dictionary

  1. pitieth
  2. pitiful
  3. pitifull
  4. pitifuller
  5. pitifullest
  6. pitifully
  7. pitifulness
  8. pitifulnesses
  9. Pitiguara
  10. Pitiguaras
  11. pitikins

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pitifully (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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