plaintive

He also has a precocious attraction to his favorite nurse, Ingrid, who sings to him every night in a “plaintive voice.”

From higher up, at the level of the hidden bed, came the regular plaintive respiration of Sarah Gailey.

There is nothing like a plaintive retort when your case is utterly indefensible.

The music grew strange and fantastic—turbulent, insistent, plaintive and soft with entreaty.

For Sara Lee's statement that she could manage would draw forth a plaintive burst from the older woman.

In one such startled interval of waking her caged cricket had given out its plaintive cry.