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Pity vs Pithy - What's the difference?

pity | pithy |

As a noun pity

is a feeling of sympathy at the misfortune or suffering of someone or something.

As a verb pity

is to feel pity for (someone or something).

As an interjection pity

is short form of what a pity.

As an adjective pithy is

concise and meaningful.

pity

English

Alternative forms

* pitty (obsolete)

Noun

  • (uncountable) A feeling of sympathy at the misfortune or suffering of someone or something.
  • * Bible, Proverbs xix. 17
    • He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the Lord.
  • * Shakespeare
    • Hehas no more pity in him than a dog.
  • *, Folio Society, 2006, p.5:
    • The most usuall way to appease those minds we have offendedis, by submission to move them to commiseration and pitty .
  • (countable) Something regrettable.
    • It's a pity you're feeling unwell because there's a party on tonight.
  • * Laurence Sterne
    • It was a thousand pities .
  • * Addison
    • What pity is it / That we can die but once to serve our country!
  • (obsolete) piety
    • (Wyclif)

    Synonyms

    * (mercy) ruth * (something regrettable) shame

    Verb

    (en-verb)
  • To feel pity for (someone or something).
  • * Bible, Psalms ciii. 13
    • Like as a father pitieth' his children, so the Lord ' pitieth them that fear him.
  • * 1596 , (Edmund Spenser), The Faerie Queene , IV.11:
    • She lenger yet is like captiv'd to bee; / That even to thinke thereof it inly pitties mee.
  • * Book of Common Prayer
    • It pitieth them to see her in the dust.

    Interjection

  • Short form of what a pity.

    • Synonyms

    * shame, what a pity, what a shame

    Derived terms

    * piteous * pitiable * pitiful * self-pity * what a pity ----

    pithy

    English

    Adjective

    (er)
  • Concise and meaningful.
  • * 1825 , ,
    • Mr. Lamb, on the contrary, being "native to the manner here," though he too has borrowed from previous sources, instead of availing himself of the most popular and admired, has groped out his way, and made his most successful researches among the more obscure and intricate, though certainly not the least pithy or pleasant of our writers.
  • * 1873 April 25, (editor), ''The Chemical News ,
    • The following passage, which is exquisitely pithy and exquisitely modest, winds up the description:- "In this apparatus there is nothing new but its simplicity and thorough trustworthiness."
  • * 1876 , ,
    • IT was a pithy' saying that of Lorenzo de' Medici, and true as ' pithy , that we are enjoined to forgive our enemies, but nowhere are we told that we should forgive our friends.
  • Of, like, or abounding in pith.
  • * 1863 , ,
    • Must we know the torrid zone only through travelled bananas, plucked too soon and pithy ? or by bottled anacondas? or by the tarry-flavored slang of forecastle-bred paroquets?
  • * 1910 , , Suggestions and Reminders I: For the North, April,
    • Parsnip .—Dig the roots before they grow and become soft and pithy .
  • * 1911 , ,
    • To summarize the characters of a true mushroom - it grows only in pastures; it is of small size, dry, and with unchangeable flesh; the cap has a frill; the gills are free from the stem, the spores brown-black or deep purple-black in colour, and the stem solid or slightly pithy .

    Synonyms

    * (brief and to the point) terse, concise, laconic, succinct