Re: "empathetic sympathetic pathetic"

kleinecke@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>
> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > kleinecke@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> > >
> > > Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > >
> > > > "Pathetic" these days has nothing to do with those sorts of shared
> > > > feelings; it simply means grossly inferior, unworthy of attention,
> > > > despicable.
> > >
> > > It seems to me that you have put too much pejorative content into
> > > "pathetic". I believe it still means "deserving of sympathy" for most
> > > people.
> >
> > > Is the Poor Little Match Girl despicable?
> >
> > No idea. What language was she written in? Danish, no? Who today would
> > describe her as pathetic?
>
> I would. Unless I described her as bathetic.
>
> I'm too lazy to go any further than the Webster's New Collegiate
> Dictionary 1975 that sits on my desk.
>
> 1. having a capacity to move one to either compassionate or
> contemptuous pity
> 2. marked by sorrow or melancholy : SAD syn see moving.
>
> I believe your definition lacked compassion, pity of any kind, sadness
> and melancholy. But it did have lots of good red-blooded elitist
> contempt!

Did you check the synonyms under "moving"?

Remember also that MW gives its definitions in historical order.

The 10th (sorry, the 11th is upstairs) has the same definitions; under
"moving" it says PATHETIC implies moving to pity or sometimes contempt
(pathetic attempts to justify misconduct>.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@xxxxxxx
.

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