pathetic
adjective
Simple meaning
Arousing pity, sympathy.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
puhthehtikSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
pəˈθɛtɪk
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
adjective
Arousing pity, sympathy, or compassion; exciting pathos.
Arousing scorn or contempt, often due to miserable inadequacy.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Arousing pity, sympathy, or compassion; exciting pathos.
Used this way, pathetic is a reasonably familiar word with a clearly warm, approving pull. It carries warmth, so it reads as personal rather than detached.
- Emotional tone
- Positive
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Moderate
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Kind and considerate
- Usage feel
- Warm and expressive
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
The fallacy of attributing human feelings to inanimate objects.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.