Miserable vs Pitiful - What's the difference?
miserable | pitiful |
In a state of misery: very sad, ill, or poor.
*
*:Thanks to that penny he had just spent so recklessly [on a newspaper] he would pass a happy hour, taken, for once, out of his anxious, despondent, miserable self. It irritated him shrewdly to know that these moments of respite from carking care would not be shared with his poor wife, with careworn, troubled Ellen.
*, chapter=7
, title= * (George Bernard Shaw) (1856–1950)
*:The secret of being miserable is to have the leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure is occupation.
Very bad (at something); unskilled, incompetent.
:
Wretched; worthless; mean.
:
(lb) Causing unhappiness or misery.
*(William Shakespeare) (c.1564–1616)
*:What's more miserable than discontent?
(lb) Avaricious; niggardly; miserly.
:(Hooker)
Feeling pity; merciful.
* 1851 , Herman Melville, Moby-Dick :
So appalling or sad that one feels or should feel sorry for it; eliciting pity.
Very small (of an amount or number).
Pitiful is a synonym of miserable.
As adjectives the difference between miserable and pitiful
is that miserable is in a state of misery: very sad, ill, or poor while pitiful is feeling pity; merciful.miserable
English
Adjective
(en-adj)The Mirror and the Lamp, passage=With some of it on the south and more of it on the north of the great main thoroughfare that connects Aldgate and the East India Docks, St.?Bede's at this period of its history was perhaps the poorest and most miserable parish in the East End of London.}}
Usage notes
* Nouns to which "miserable" is often applied: life, condition, state, situation, day, time, creature, person, child, failure, place, world, season, year, week, experience, feeling, work, town, city, wage, job, case, excuse, dog.Synonyms
* See also * See alsoDerived terms
* miserablism * miserabilism * miserablist * miserabilistpitiful
English
Alternative forms
* pitifull (archaic)Adjective
(pitifuller)- Straightway, he now goes on to make a full confession; whereupon the mariners became more and more appalled, but still are pitiful .
- Scotland has a pitiful climate.
- A pitiful number of students bothered to turn up.