Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use pitiful in a sentence

16 example sentences · adjective, adverb

Pitiful means so appalling or sad that one feels or should feel sorry for it; eliciting pity. Example: “Scotland has a pitiful climate.”

Examples of pitiful by meaning

adjectiveSo appalling or sad that one feels or should feel sorry for it; eliciting pity.

  • Scotland has a pitiful climate.

adjectiveOf an amount or number: very small.

  • A pitiful number of students bothered to turn up.

More sentences with pitiful

  • Reports on the pitiful state of many prisons have finally percolated through to the Home Office, which has promised to look into the situation.From the entry percolate
  • Most nurses found the helplessness of "the shell shocks" painful and "pitiful."2004, Susan Zeiger, In Uncle Sam's Service: Women Workers with the American Expeditionary Force, 1917—1919, page 131. From the entry shell shock
  • On Sunday it would be even more drinking, plus the Times, and the pitiful "Jints" on TV.2000, James Patterson, The Midnight Club, page 101. From the entry jints
  • "I really wish you'd learn to bark, buddy." Oatie gazed up at her with his best pitiful expression.2017, Karen Traviss, chapter 2, in Black Run (Ringer; 2), →ISBN, page 38. From the entry mommie's boy
  • He caused us to be late getting on the road because he was playing the “poor, pitiful, no-one understands me” card.2012, Tracie Crawford, I Changed My Mind, →ISBN, page 76. From the entry show one's butt
  • At night, the sounds were different, no less pitiful.2004, Gail Sidonie Sobat, A Winter's Tale, page 101. From the entry night fear
  • The Hawaiian duck or koloa (Anas wyvilliana) has never been reduced to anything like the pitiful remnant that once represented its relatives on Laysan.2000, Errol Fuller, Extinct Birds, Oxford, page 83. From the entry koloa
  • The least she could do was crawl back into her severely stylish shell, so she wouldn't look pitiful when he gave her the old heave-ho.1997, Linda Howard, Shades of Twilight, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, page 156. From the entry give someone the old heave-ho
  • He knows further that the clay-born are a pitiful, pitiless majority, and that he may do nothing which they do not do.July 1900, Jack London, “The Dignity of Dollars”, in Overland Monthly, volume 36, number 211, pages 53–57. From the entry rope of sand
  • I don’t think there is anything more pitiful than a man, who has been in business for himself, to have to give up and say he is a failure.2004 June 30, Elizabeth Cooper, Drusilla with a Million, Kessinger Publishing, page 197. From the entry jasm
  • The rooter was terrorized, what with the mechanical noises right behind it, and it abandoned evasive turns and darts and made for the horizon with pitiful desperation.1994, Paul Quarrington, Civilization: And Its Part in My Downfall, page 205. From the entry rooter
  • Steerpike derived as much pleasure in watching these anile and pitiful creatures, dressed in their purple finery, as they crawled beneath the carpet as he got from anything.1950, Mervyn Peake, chapter 8, in Gormenghast, London: Eyre & Spottiswoode. From the entry anile
  • But if you lack talent you will never be even a poor artist, you will remain outside the ranks, cutting a pitiful and a rather ridiculous figure.1913, “Chapter XXVII. Women and Literature”, in Winifred Stephens, transl., Madeleine at Her Mirror: A Woman’s Diary, translation of…. From the entry scribbleress
  • This is the distinctive milieu of Succession, the HBO juggernaut which turned the pitiful exploits of a bunch of media mogul failsons into Shakespearean drama for four critically acclaimed seasons.2025 June 2, Adrian Horton, “Tech-bro satire Mountainhead is an insufferable disappointment”, in The Guardian, →ISSN. From the entry Shakespearean

Meaning of pitiful

  1. adjective So appalling or sad that one feels or should feel sorry for it; eliciting pity.
  2. adjective Eliciting contempt.
  3. adjective Of an amount or number: very small.

Full definition of pitiful

Questions about pitiful in a sentence

How do you use pitiful in a sentence?
Pitiful is used as an adjective and adverb. For example: “Scotland has a pitiful climate.”
What is a short sentence with pitiful?
“Scotland has a pitiful climate.”
What does pitiful mean?
Pitiful means so appalling or sad that one feels or should feel sorry for it; eliciting pity.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pitiful (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use pitiful in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/pitiful. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.