Entry Word: rueful

Function: adjective

Meaning: 1 expressing or suggesting mourning <the rueful faces of friends and family who had gathered to pay their last respects> — see mournful 1
2 feeling sorrow for a wrong that one has done <a rueful youth who had come to ask for forgiveness> — see contrite 1
3 deserving of oneʼs pity <the rueful, desperate poverty of people in parts of the Third World> — see pathetic 1