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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

ruthful.

Full of sorrow; sorrowful; woeful; rueful.

7 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

adj/ˈɹuːθ.fʊl/UK, US
  1. Full of sorrow; sorrowful; woeful; rueful.

  2. Causing pity; piteous.

  3. Full of ruth or pity; merciful; compassionate.

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 Middle English -the Old Norse hrygðinflu. Middle English reuþe 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 reuþful English ruthful From Middle English reuþful, reuthful, reowthful, equivalent to ruth + -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.