How to Use rueful in a Sentence

rueful

adjective

• He gave me a rueful smile and apologized.
• The word rueful comes up a lot about his smile or his demeanor.
  — Shirley Li, The Atlantic, 11 Aug. 2022
• Streisand sings it with astute, rueful humor and a touch of heartache.
  — Tom Gliatto, Peoplemag, 18 Nov. 2023
• Mourinho in turn fell to his knees with a rueful smile when Lo Celso slid the ball wide in the closing stages of the match.
  — Sarah Holt, CNN, 11 Jan. 2020
• Even the surprise at the end invites rueful head-shaking rather than gasps.
  — Toby Zinman, Philly.com, 3 Nov. 2017
• In On the Record’s later scenes, these comments take on a more rueful valence.
  — Hannah Giorgis, The Atlantic, 1 June 2020
• Her mood will soften and become more rueful as the album goes along… and then get pissed again.
  — Chris Willman, Variety, 17 Sep. 2021
• As with that series, laughs maybe aren’t the goal here, so much as half-smiles of rueful recognition.
  — Washington Post, 11 May 2022
• Of course, in general, blue-collar folks are gonna be pranksters, and funny, and rueful.
  — Aric Jenkins, Fortune, 29 Jan. 2020
• Without a rueful sense of heartbreak eating away at the girls, the comedy feels too fluffy.
  — Karen D'souza, The Mercury News, 16 Jan. 2017
• The creepiness is all the more insistent for being so rueful and polite.
  — Anthony Lane, The New Yorker, 3 Feb. 2023
• After all that, adds a rueful Carpenter, only about two chips sold for that car all year.
  — Barry Winfield, WIRED, 1 May 1994
• For up to an hour, though, Downsizing seems to play to the director's best, most acidly rueful instincts.
  — Guy Lodge, HWD, 30 Aug. 2017
• In seconds, almost everyone in the class had a hand in the air, and the mood shifted from embarrassment and fear to an almost rueful sort of pride.
  — B. Pietras, Longreads, 27 Apr. 2020
• Glossy summer cityscapes and arty cold opens provide tasteful settings for the show’s rueful patter.
  — Richard Lawson, HWD, 2 Apr. 2018
• There’s a rueful saying among traders that markets will move in whatever direction that will cause them the most pain.
  — Peter Coy, Bloomberg.com, 11 June 2020
• My feverish brain wanted to make rueful meaning of that moment in real time.
  — Hazlitt, 13 June 2022
• Aside from a brief flash of bared bum in the final scene, there is no full nudity here, and the show looks at its characters not with a leer but a rueful smile of compassion.
  — Ben Brantley, New York Times, 4 Feb. 2020
• The play is an end-of-the-Elizabethan-age work, full of wry contempt for its own pastoral form and rueful melancholy for a golden age already in sunset.
  — Helen Shaw, The New Yorker, 1 Sep. 2022
• The rueful part is in Baez’s lament that there are no siblings or parents left with whom to compare experiences anymore.
  — Chris Willman, Variety, 20 Feb. 2023
• Knowing laughter rippled through the audience as Smith cracked a rueful smile.
  — Erika D. Smithcolumnist, Los Angeles Times, 28 Mar. 2022
• Atwood’s wry and rueful tales bridge the gap between your usual reading habits and your new interest in the natural world.
  — Nicole Lamy, New York Times, 1 May 2018
• Dorsey was less elaborate Thursday in his thoughts on Twitter’s state of being, though no less rueful about his creation.
  — Jacob Carpenter, Fortune, 26 Aug. 2022
• Game of Thrones had a rueful sense of humor to go along with its violence and mind games, and highly quotable characters like Tyrion and Cersei.
  — Larisha Paul, Rolling Stone, 26 Aug. 2022
• Charlie every month bought The Face and i-D magazines, spent hours on the fashion layouts, poring over them, with an expert’s keen and rueful air.
  — Kevin Barry, Harper's magazine, 28 Oct. 2019
• The tone throughout Strength is by turns optimistic, rueful, and paternal.
  — Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 17 Nov. 2023
• That’s the story told by the film’s poster, which features a diptych of star Mark Wahlberg, looking rough and rueful in a mug shot and then beatific in Catholic clergy apparel.
  — Katie Walsh, Los Angeles Times, 12 Apr. 2022
• Her stoicism captures the reverence that Britons have for their cradle-to-grave health system, but also their rueful sense that it is broken.
  — Mark Landler, BostonGlobe.com, 16 July 2023
• There were rueful headshakes, the mixing timbres of semiforced laughter.
  — Aaron Gilbreath, Longreads, 6 Apr. 2018
• The rueful irony of Britton’s tweet sums up the sentiment of what must feel like a missed opportunity to prove himself at a higher level.
  — SI.com, 27 Apr. 2018

Last Updated: 5 Nov 2024