pathetic.
Arousing pity, sympathy, or compassion; exciting pathos.
Meaning & usage
Arousing pity, sympathy, or compassion; exciting pathos.
The child’s pathetic pleas for forgiveness stirred the young man’s heart.
Arousing scorn or contempt, often due to miserable inadequacy.
You can't even run two miles? That’s pathetic.
You're almost 26 years old and you still can't hold a real job? That's pathetic.
Expressing or showing anger; passionate.
Trochlear.
Where this word comes from
From Middle French pathétique, from Latin patheticus, from Ancient Greek παθητικός (pathētikós, “subject to feeling, capable of feeling, impassioned”), from παθητός (pathētós, “one who has suffered, subject to suffering”), from πάσχω (páskhō, “to suffer”). By surface analysis, path- + -etic.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.