pity

1、怜悯、同情；也表遗憾（What a pity! 真可惜！）。重音在前，读 /ˈpɪt.i/，i 发短音 /ɪ/，和 sit 一样。
2、来自拉丁 pietas（虔诚、孝爱）：同根 piety（虔诚）、pious（虔诚的、笃信的）、pittance（少量、微薄的救济金）——都由"敬神爱人"引出"怜悯同情"。
3、近义辨析：pity 指对弱者、不幸者的怜惜；sympathy 指感情相投的同情；compassion 更书面、含"急于相助"；mercy 指对本该受罚者的宽恕。to take pity on sb 可怜某人。

pity 可怜，同情

来自古法语pitet,可怜，同情，怜悯，关切，来自拉丁语pietas,职责，虔诚，笃信宗教，词源同piety,pious.词义演变由虔诚引申为行善，关爱世人，可怜，同情，怜悯等。

pity

pity: [13] Latin pius ‘pious’, an adjective of unknown origin which gave English expiate and pious, had a noun derivative pietās. This has come into English in three distinct forms. First to arrive, more or less contemporaneously, were pity and piety [13], which were borrowed from respectively Old French pite and piete. These both developed from Latin pietās, and were originally synonymous, but they became differentiated in meaning before they arrived in English.

The Italian descendant of the Latin noun was pietà, which English took over in the 17th century as a term for a ‘statue of Mary holding the body of the crucified Christ’. Vulgar Latin *pietantia, a derivative of pietās, meant ‘charitable donation’. It has given English pittance [13].
=> expiate, piety, pious, pittance

pity (n.)

early 13c., from Old French pite, pitet "pity, mercy, compassion, care, tenderness; pitiful state, wretched condition" (11c., Modern French pitié), from Latin pietatem (nominative pietas) "piety, loyalty, duty" (see piety). Replaced Old English mildheortness, literally "mild-heartness," itself a loan-translation of Latin misericordia. English pity and piety were not fully distinguished until 17c. Transferred sense of "grounds or cause for pity" is from late 14c.

pity (v.)

"to feel pity for," late 15c., from Old French pitier and from pity (n.). Related: Pitied; pitying.

1. She summoned up all her pity for him, to smother her self-pity.

她抑制着心中的自怜，将满腔的怜悯之情都倾注在了他的身上。

2. Leo went on, his dark eyes wide with pity and concern.

利奥接着说下去，他的黑眼睛瞪得大大的，充满怜悯和关切。

3. Supposedly his last words to her were: "You must not pity me."

据说他对她说的最后一句话是：“别怜悯我。”

4. She knew that she was an object of pity among her friends.

她知道自己是朋友们同情的对象。

5. The pity of it was that the Americans didn't play cricket.

可惜的是美国人不打板球。

【pity, sympathy, compassion, mercy】
这组词都有“同情、怜悯”的意思，其区别是：
pity: 指对弱者、不幸者所表示的怜惜之情。
sympathy: 普通常用词，含义广。指志趣、看法上的一致，也指感情相投，带有深深的恻隐之心的亲切之情。
compassion: 较正式较庄重用词，指对同等人的同情与理解，常含急切愿意帮忙的意味。
mercy: 侧重指对应受惩罚或地位卑下者的慈悲或怜悯。