pity
Pluralpities (some meanings)
Pluralpities (some meanings)
- 1A feeling of sympathy at the misfortune or suffering of another person or thing.
A wave of pity swept over her as she watched the refugees arrive.
He gave the beggar a few coins out of pity rather than duty.
Similarcompassion, sympathy, empathy, mercy, commiseration
Oppositeindifference, cruelty, callousness
Note
Compassion with a long pedigree: pity came through Anglo-Norman and Old French from Latin pietās, the same word that gave English piety and pietà. Here it is uncountable, and it usually travels with a preposition. You take pity on someone, or, in the King James Bible of 1611, have pity upon the poor. Mercy stands close beside it, and so does the older word ruth.
- 2A regrettable fact or situation; something one wishes were otherwise.
It would be a pity to waste such fine weather sitting indoors.
The demolition of the old theater was a real pity for the town.
Similarshame
Note
Here pity stops being the feeling and becomes a countable thing, the regrettable situation itself. It lives in a few fixed frames: it's a pity (that)…, what a pity about…. Because it counts, Laurence Sterne could write in Tristram Shandy that it was a thousand pities. Shame fits the same frames. Addison's Cato (1713) still drops the article: what pity is it that we can die but once.
- 3To feel sympathy or sorrow for someone or something in difficulty.
Don't pity me; I made these choices with my eyes open.
The villagers pitied the orphan and quietly took him in.
Similarcommiserate
- 4Ellipsis of what a pity.
Pity. The last train left only ten minutes ago.
No tickets left? Pity, the concert sounded wonderful.
Note
Clipped from what a pity, the single word keeps the whole phrase's note of regret or disappointment. It usually stands alone as a reply and is followed by the reason: Pity; the last train has gone. Shame and what a shame do the same job. For the noun inside the phrase, see the regrettable-situation meaning.
- 5To make someone feel pity; to stir their sympathy or compassion.
Their hardship would pity even a hardened stranger.
It pitied her to watch the neighbors pack up the farm they had worked for forty years.
Similarmove, touch, sadden, affect
Note
The verb runs backward here: the sad sight is the subject, and the person moved is the object, usually through an empty it. Spenser writes "it inly pitties mee" in The Faerie Queene (1596), and Richard Allestree has "It pitieth them to see her in the dust." The use now survives only regionally. Elsewhere, say it makes me sorry to see her, or use the ordinary verb: I pity her.
Less common meaning
- 6Religious devotion or reverence toward God; piety.
Note
Read Early Modern prose with care here. In Thomas Watson's 1558 doctrine of the sacraments, a heart is "mollified with pitie and deuotion," and John Dyos in 1579 sets pitie beside zeale and truth. That pitie is devotion, and it could be directed toward one's country as well as toward God. The meaning is obsolete. Modern English writes piety for it, and pity now means compassion.
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Origin
From Middle English "pitye," borrowed through Anglo-Norman and Old French forms such as "pitié," from Latin "pietas." It shares its origin with the words "pietà" and "piety."