ruefully
Americanadverb
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in a mournful or doleful way.
I found myself sitting ruefully by the side of the road, near a little town in North Carolina, waiting for a tow truck.
-
in a way that suggests repentance or regret.
He is aware of his own flaws, at times ruefully so.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Etymology
Origin of ruefully
Explanation
When you do something in a way that expresses regret, you’re doing it ruefully. If someone asks you about your Saturday night and you smile ruefully in response . . . well . . . you probably made some poor choices. The origin of the word ruefully is a Germanic word that means “repentance.” But over time the word has adopted a slightly humorous tone, so you can go ahead and shake your head ruefully at your friend who has just put his boot on the wrong foot — you feel a little bit sorry for him at the moment. You might grin ruefully when asked about how many pairs of shoes you bought on your trip.
Vocabulary lists containing ruefully
The Outsiders
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Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
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Lord of the Flies
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Ruefully, she noted that, despite having no say over their future, she still bears financial responsibility for the embryos and pays annual “rent” to the clinic where they are stored.
From The New Yorker • Oct. 22, 2019
Ruefully, and rightly as it turned out, one lifelong investigator of the Kennedy assassination predicted that there “won’t be any smoking gun” in the cache of nearly 3,000 JFK-related documents released late on Thursday night.
From The Guardian • Oct. 27, 2017
Ruefully they noted that when he married the same year, Viola and Alfred raised no objection – perhaps because their other daughter-in-law was a teacher.
From The Guardian • Aug. 23, 2014
Ruefully, Rinfret concedes: "That got me a lot of bad publicity."
From Time Magazine Archive
Ruefully I considered that the truths I sought had died with him, and the only other person who could shed fight on these questions, Hamlet, was himself a mystery.
From "Ophelia" by Lisa Klein
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
