But even these PATHETIC (financial) returns haven't caused the largest money-market investors to liquidate their accounts.
(Slate.com)
--- The current rules for restoring houses are simply PATHETIC. So are the standards for building new ones: in Sweden they were tougher in 1978 than they are in Britain today.
(The Guardian Unlimited)
Did you know?
pathetic adjective
Causing feelings of sadness, sympathy or sometimes lack of respect, especially because a person or an animal is suffering.
(Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary)
--- WORD ORIGIN Derived from the Latin patheticus and the Greek pathetikos, meaning sensitive, and pathetos which means liable to suffer. Also borrowed from the French pathetique, which means moving or stirring.
(adapted from the Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology)