rueful.
Causing, feeling, or expressing regret or sorrow, especially in a wry or humorous way.
Meaning & usage
Causing, feeling, or expressing regret or sorrow, especially in a wry or humorous way.
Inspiring pity or compassion.
Bad; woeful; deplorable.
Where this word comes from
Etymology tree Proto-Germanic *hrewwaną Proto-West Germanic *hreuwan Proto-Indo-European *-h₂ Proto-Indo-European *-éh₂ Proto-Germanic *-ō Proto-West Germanic *-u Proto-West Germanic *hreuwu Old English hrēow Middle English rewe Proto-Indo-European *pleh₁- Proto-Indo-European *-nós Proto-Indo-European *pl̥h₁nós Proto-Germanic *fullaz Proto-Germanic *-fullaz Old English -ful Middle English -ful Middle English reuful English rueful From Middle English ruful, rewful. By surface analysis, rue + -ful.
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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.