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Pathetic
Open directlyWebster's 1828 Dictionary · 1828
Part of speech: adjective (a.)
1. Expressing or showing anger; passionate. [Obs.]
2. Affecting or moving the tender emotions, esp. pity or grief; full of pathos; as, a pathetic song or story. "Pathetic action." Macaulay. No theory of the passions can teach a man to be pathetic. E. Porter. Pathetic muscle (Anat.), the superior oblique muscle of the eye. -- Pathetic nerve (Anat.), the fourth cranial, or trochlear, nerve, which supplies the superior oblique, or pathetic, muscle of the eye. -- The pathetic, a style or manner adapted to arouse the tender emotions.