Word.ws English Dictionary

pity porn

pity porn noun: a cinema or TV production designed to elicit great pity from the viewers, but without helping the people concerned.

Noun

pity porn (uncountable)

  1. (derogatory, informal) A cinema or TV production designed to elicit great pity from the viewers, but without helping the people concerned.
    • Grimsby doesn’t ever wound quite as devastatingly as Borat or Brüno, but it’s a vital, lavish, venomously profane two fingers up at Benefits Street pity porn and the social division it fosters.2016 February 23, Robbie Collin, “Grimsby review: ' Sacha Baron Cohen's vital, venomous action movie'”, in The Daily Telegraph (London)

Questions about pity porn

What does pity porn mean?
Pity porn means a cinema or TV production designed to elicit great pity from the viewers, but without helping the people concerned.
What part of speech is pity porn?
Pity porn is a noun.

Words near pity porn in the dictionary

  1. pity guests
  2. Pity Me
  3. pity parties
  4. pity party
  5. pity pie
  6. pity porn
  7. pity pot
  8. pity pots
  9. pity potties
  10. pity potty
  11. pityful

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pity porn (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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Cite this entry: “pity porn.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pity_porn. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.