What's the difference between miserable and pitiable?

Miserable


Definition:

  • (a.) Very unhappy; wretched.
  • (a.) Causing unhappiness or misery.
  • (a.) Worthless; mean; despicable; as, a miserable fellow; a miserable dinner.
  • (a.) Avaricious; niggardly; miserly.
  • (n.) A miserable person.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) He told strikers at St Thomas’ hospital, London: “By taking action on such a miserable morning you are sending a strong message that decent men and women in the jewel of our civilisation are not prepared to be treated as second-class citizens any more.
  • (2) "It's always been done in a really miserable way in the past, but this is fresh and new.
  • (3) Supporting a Sunderland side who had last won a home Premier League game back in January, when Stoke City were narrowly defeated, is not a pursuit for the faint-hearted but this was turning into the equivalent of the sudden dawning of a gloriously hot sunny day amid a miserable, cold, wet summer.
  • (4) People like Hugo forgot how truly miserable Paris had been for ordinary Parisians.” Out of a job and persona non grata in Paris, Haussmann spent six months in Italy to lift his spirits.
  • (5) But my characters are either really strong, miserable or tortured."
  • (6) A full marching band moved through a sea of umbrellas, playing the Les Miserables song Do You Hear the People Sing.
  • (7) Similarly at world level, it considers the struggles and efforts by the miserable and oppressed nations for achievement of their legitimate rights and independence as their due rights, because people have the right to liberate their countries from colonialism and obtain their rights.
  • (8) My first marriage is the only thing I've ever failed at and I failed miserably."
  • (9) If after 10 years the Californian law is working well: that’s to say it is not being used against the weak and miserable as a cheaper alternative to proper palliative care, there will be no reason not to extend it here.
  • (10) Low point: "When a show I directed, Paul Simon's The Capeman, failed miserably."
  • (11) The smile, so noticeably absent during a miserable final season at his boyhood club, was back.
  • (12) His father died when Giulio was two, and the family survived on his mother's miserly widow's pension.
  • (13) Roberto Firmino and Adam Lallana established a comfortable advantage for the home side, only for Adam Johnson’s free-kick, and Simon Mignolet’s weak attempt to stop it, plus Defoe’s clinical late strike to extend Liverpool’s miserable run to five points out of 18 in 2016.
  • (14) This drubbing exposed not only the team's inadequacy on the day in the face of a rampant United side who sensed miserable resistance almost from the kick-off, but also Arsène Wenger's tepid commitment to the FA Cup, whatever his ready-made complaints of depleted resources before and after.
  • (15) "He truly had such a miserable time on the first day or two of the shoot.
  • (16) Fair pay, not benefits or subsidies to miserly employers, brought Labour into being – so why is the party in danger of letting this strong emblematic policy slip away?
  • (17) On the positive side, it will very soon overtake Les Miserables (£40.8m) to become the second-biggest 2013 release, behind only Despicable Me 2 (£47.4m).
  • (18) Smoldering resentment, chronic anger, self-centeredness, vindictiveness, and a constant feeling of being abused ultimately produce a miserable human being who, as well as being alienated from self, alienates those in the interpersonal sphere.
  • (19) As soon as you live in the place, it becomes grey and miserable – as do the people.
  • (20) The good thing about the above is the equal-opportunities nature of it: almost everyone is made to feel inadequate or miserable.

Pitiable


Definition:

  • (a.) Deserving pity; wworthy of, or exciting, compassion; miserable; lamentable; piteous; as, pitiable persons; a pitiable condition; pitiable wretchedness.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) "He is not here," says a rebel guard: glazed eyes, rifle slung over ill-fitting uniform, pitiably young.
  • (2) Sometimes, characters who aren't having sex are seen as pitiable but most of the time, whether they can't or won't do it, we're just supposed to laugh at them.
  • (3) Louis Kavanagh of Solihull, who proposed the motion, blamed “lazy students, pitiable parenting, ineffectual school discipline measures and structures putting all the burden on the class teacher”.
  • (4) Descriptions of how he had been severely bullied at school were used to explain how he had become a pitiable, alienated individual who barely left the house except to empty his bins, and whose only life was lived through the internet.
  • (5) Struggling, but with scant success, to get her head round the concept of an independent Scotland, the mother in the much-viewed Better Together advertisement , the Woman Who Made up Her Mind, cuts a pitiable figure.
  • (6) Where the Miley Cyruses of this world try cropping their hair off and gyrating semi-naked in order to be seen as adults, or the likes of Lindsay Lohan and Amanda Bynes lose all semblance of a plan and spin off into pitiable tabloid notoriety, Gomez's transition has been rather smarter.
  • (7) Sad!” The paradox is that the president never seems more cheerful than when denouncing something as sad, finding as he does perhaps his only moments of authentic happiness in portraying the position of his enemies as pitiably hopeless.
  • (8) "It was pitiable to see these poor people struggling with their adversity, and to think of the cheerless night they must spend amid their sodden surroundings," the Eastern Daily Press wrote.
  • (9) A throwback to the early Zionists, he was wedded to the soil, certain of his beliefs, the antithesis of the supposedly pitiable diaspora Jew.
  • (10) The ABC broadcast brings front and centre a number of uncertainties, confusions and misconceptions about holding refugees in pitiable Pacific states.
  • (11) Those seeking to defend shouldn't feel they have to portray themselves as anything close to pitiable in response.
  • (12) As Cady (la Lohan, who has also undergone many changes in the past decade) notes in Mean Girls, “In Girl World, Halloween is the one night a year when a girl can dress like a total slut, and no other girls can say anything about it.” In other words, it’s something that pitiable and confused teenage girls do, like affecting to enjoy smoking, or pretending to be interested in every boring thing some boring boy says in the hope he’ll provide her with some self-validation.
  • (13) This paper deals with the pitiable case of a meanwhile four years old infant having been battered by his stepmother.
  • (14) Behind the far-left yobs, who disgrace every good cause in Britain, the protesters who did not riot in Parliament Square on Thursday looked almost pitiable.
  • (15) Any unmarried, unmothered woman over 30 is generally described as "brave" for which read: pitiable, for which read: tragic ( "Taking her mind off her newly single status, Kelly Brook, 33, was seen laughing and smiling … She appeared to be coping well."
  • (16) They are the most pitiable group of cases seen, but they can all be offered some help, however limited one's resources.
  • (17) It is, again, easy to dismiss her charity work as a rational extension of her own narcissism, which is almost pitiable in itself – it is a truism that it is almost impossible to recover from fame.