Word.ws English Dictionary

plightful

plightful adjective: full of risk or danger; risky; dangerous; perilous.

Adjective (1)

plightful (comparative more plightful, superlative most plightful)

  1. Full of risk or danger; risky; dangerous; perilous.
    • This is their doom that here in sin Lie and their sins will not cease; But would they think about Judgment Day, It behooves them to leave their plightful play.1965, Francis X. Corrigan, Middle English readings in translation
    • Athelstan said, in a much more serious way, “It is truly a plightful time for the Angles, and it always has been, as far back as I can remember. The Northmen kill or at least mar all that they touch.2005, Curt Bissonette, Noble Stone
  2. Full of plight; plighted; pledged; devoted.
    • She liv'd and lov'd.―I wedded two. 'The Devil!'―Yes. What could I do? To her I ow'd my plightful vow, To Ruth, my life, and freedom now.1866, Henry J. Verlander, The bride of Rougemont

Adjective (2)

plightful (comparative more plightful, superlative most plightful)

  1. Indicating plight; dire; grim; grievous.
    • For example, poor villagers can destroy the forests because of their plightful conditions.2009, Dr. Ulas Basar Gezgin, Vietnam & Asia in Flux, 2008
  2. Pitiful.
    • In some surreal and inevitable moment, some jingle-jangle wee hour of morning, they may even have shared billing on the same campus stage: joined harmonics and harmonics, strummed out some plightful version of "Musee des Beaux Arts" [...]1972, Commonweal, volume 96

Forms of plightful

comparativemore plightful
superlativemost plightful

Origin of plightful

From Middle English plightful, plihtful, equivalent to plight + -ful.

From plight + -ful.

Questions about plightful

What does plightful mean?
Plightful means full of risk or danger; risky; dangerous; perilous.
What part of speech is plightful?
Plightful is an adjective.

Words near plightful in the dictionary

  1. plig
  2. plight
  3. plighted
  4. plighter
  5. plighters
  6. plightful
  7. plighting
  8. plightings
  9. plightless
  10. plightly
  11. plights

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: plightful (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: “plightful.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/plightful. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.