Word.ws English Dictionary

ruefull

ruefull is the obsolete form of rueful.

Meaning of rueful

Adjective

rueful (comparative more rueful, superlative most rueful)

  1. Causing, feeling, or expressing regret or sorrow, especially in a wry or humorous way.
    • "I like the young, andro look, but I've dated across the board—butches, femmes, trannies—and that really bothers Clara. All her girlfriends in the past have been pretty much straight." Kim offers a rueful little laugh.2004, New York
  2. Inspiring pity or compassion.
  3. Bad; woeful; deplorable.
    • The first who made the experiment was a merry-andrew, who was put into my hands by a neighbouring justice of peace, in order to reclaim him from that profligate kind of life. Poor Pickle-herring had not taken above one turn in it, when he came out of the cave, like a hermit from his cell, with a...1714 September 24 (Gregorian calendar), [Joseph Addison], “MONDAY, September 14, 1714”, in The Spectator, number 599; republished in Alexander Chalmers, editor, The Spectator; a New Edition, […]...

Forms of ruefull

comparativemore ruefull
superlativemost ruefull

Questions about ruefull

What is ruefull the obsolete form of?
Ruefull is the obsolete form of rueful.

Words near ruefull in the dictionary

  1. ruedas
  2. Ruedi-Allgower classification
  3. Rueff
  4. Rueffs
  5. rueful
  6. ruefull
  7. ruefully
  8. ruefulness
  9. ruefulnesses
  10. Rueger
  11. Ruegers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ruefull (page history and authors); rueful (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: “ruefull.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ruefull. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.