piteousnessn.

a1393 J. Gower Confessio Amantis (Fairf.) vii. 3526 (MED) A king schal be pitous, Bot elles, if he be doubtous To slen in cause of rihtwisnesse, It mai be said no Pitousnesse, Bot it is Pusillamite.

1567 A. Golding tr. Ovid Metamorphosis (new ed.) viii. 103 One while hir looke resembled one that threatned cruelnesse: Another while ye would haue thought she minded pitiousnesse.

a1586 Sir P. Sidney Arcadia (1590) ii. x. sig. T6^v Sirs (answered he, with a good grace, and made the more agreable by a certaine noble kinde of pitiousnes) I see well you are straungers, that know not our miserie.

1607 G. Markham First Pt. First Bk. Eng. Arcadia f. 14 The God with a mourning pitiousnes diued downe into the deepe, and was no more descerned.

1608 G. Markham & L. Machin Dumbe Knight iv. sig. H4^v Will haue them both condemn'd imediately, Without their answeres plaints or piteousnes.

1749 E. Yardley Good Samaritan 5 The Piteousness of his Case made him forget the Resentment which his Sect bare to the Jews.

1862 A. Trollope Orley Farm II. v. 41 Lady Mason..flinging herself upon her friend's neck..begged with earnest piteousness to be forgiven.

1872 ‘G. Eliot’ Middlemarch I. xxi. 377 She did not even speak, but sat looking at her hands, absorbed in the piteousness of that thought.

1916 Amer. Jrnl. Sociol. 21 435 There is the professional mendicant whose tone and tale far surpass in piteousness the appeal of the honest victim of misfortune.

1992 N. E. Tawa Mainstream Music Early Twentieth Cent. v. 112 Nineteenth-century minstrelsy..had relished the drollness, the foolishness, and the piteousness of human behavior.