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Pitiful vs Sympathy - What's the difference?

pitiful | sympathy |

As an adjective pitiful

is feeling pity; merciful.

As a noun sympathy is

a feeling of pity or sorrow for the suffering or distress of another; compassion.

pitiful

English

Alternative forms

* pitifull (archaic)

Adjective

(pitifuller)
  • Feeling pity; merciful.
  • * 1851 , Herman Melville, Moby-Dick :
    • Straightway, he now goes on to make a full confession; whereupon the mariners became more and more appalled, but still are pitiful .
  • So appalling or sad that one feels or should feel sorry for it; eliciting pity.
    • Scotland has a pitiful climate.
  • Very small (of an amount or number).
    • A pitiful number of students bothered to turn up.

    Synonyms

    * See also

    Related terms

    * pitiable * pity

    sympathy

    English

    (wikipedia sympathy)

    Noun

    (sympathies)
  • A feeling of pity or sorrow for the suffering or distress of another; compassion.
  • The ability to share the feelings of another.
  • A mutual relationship between people or things such that they are correspondingly affected by any condition.
  • * 1997 , Chris Horrocks, Introducing Foucault'', page 67, ''The Renaissance Episteme (Totem Books, Icon Books; ISBN 1840460865)
    • 'Sympathy' likened anything to anything else in universal attraction, e.g. the fate of men to the course of the planets.
  • Tendency towards or approval of the aims of a movement.

    • Usage notes

    * Used similarly to empathy, interchangeably in looser usage. In stricter usage, (term) is stronger and more intimate, while sympathy is weaker and more distant; see .

    Antonyms

    * contempt (context-dependent)

    Derived terms

    * (l) * (l) * (l), (l)