How to Use self-pity in a Sentence
self-pity
noun-
Become a Subscriber The trick is not to feel self-pity.
— Donald Platt, The Atlantic, 15 Oct. 2023 -
There’s no way any of these characters are self-pitying.
— Simran Hans, New York Times, 14 June 2023 -
The loss of Eileen and return of the self-pitying Orwell alter ego are certainly linked.
— Stephen Metcalf, The Atlantic, 5 Apr. 2024 -
First there was anger, then there was self-pity, then came a period of introspection.
— Steve Douglas, USA TODAY, 18 Jan. 2024 -
In a split second, whatever self-pity had taken a hold of him following the attack is gone.
— Manuel Betancourt, Los Angeles Times, 30 Mar. 2024 -
The process, at times, has left him vacillating from tears of self-pity to intense anger and severe depression.
— Phil McCausland, NBC News, 6 Aug. 2023 -
Never mind that country music is — or was, a few decades back — the genre people could count on to commiserate in self-pity.
— Tom Roland, Billboard, 19 July 2023 -
Where Zoolander is flashy and silly, Greenberg is self-pitying, self-aware, and self-serving: think Girls for grown men.
— Lia Beck, EW.com, 12 Jan. 2024 -
Boyle plays Booth as both vainglorious and self-pitying.
— Stuart Miller, Los Angeles Times, 15 Mar. 2024 -
The butterfly is meant to symbolize her fairy godmother, who helps Carolina get rid of self-pity to take control of her life.
— Andrea Flores, Los Angeles Times, 21 Aug. 2023 -
Antonioni lesson learned, Davies transcends the shoe-gazing self-pity shown by so many of the world’s woke filmmakers who suffer sick Eros and sick Morality.
— Armond White, National Review, 4 Oct. 2023 -
The self-pity in their music is run-of-the-mill, but the exhilaration and desolation and honesty and we’re-coming-out exuberance—that part’s unique.
— Rob Sheffield, Rolling Stone, 25 Sep. 2023 -
Scene 6: Jean’s death Oppenheimer is devastated at the news that Jean died by suicide, but Kitty has no sympathy for his self-pitying.
— Tim Grierson, Los Angeles Times, 20 Feb. 2024 -
But that factor also contributes to the queasy feeling in High & Low that the subject is less defined by humbled remorse than self-pitying martyrdom.
— David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter, 2 Sep. 2023 -
Madame Ovary, as she was called by one conservative French critic, was the prime example of the erosion of literary art by narratives of self-pity and marginalization.
— Rachel Cusk, New York Times, 2 May 2023 -
In several letters, Gunn apologizes for talking about himself at all, and often equates self-expression with self-pity.
— Matthew Bevis, Harper's Magazine, 9 Feb. 2022 -
Trump should remember that self-pitying laments about legal troubles are never audience-pleasers.
— Walter Shapiro, The New Republic, 10 Apr. 2023 -
Social media thrives on self-deprecating riffs about rejection, but writers tend to reserve their most despairing fits of self-pity for their diaries.
— Mark Athitakis, Washington Post, 6 Mar. 2023 -
Paranoid about her unpopularity, prone to self-pity, the latter-day Queen is (as written) strikingly uninvolved in affairs of state.
— Lili Loofbourow, Washington Post, 14 Dec. 2023 -
Thrives on self-pity and emotional turmoil, seeking attention and sympathy from others.
— Mark Travers, Forbes, 2 Mar. 2024 -
Gore resisted self-pity by projecting mordant good humor.
— David Remnick, The New Yorker, 6 Oct. 2023 -
That, in the aftermath of the Díaz incident, almost every club could pick out a litany of its own injustices in the recent past was designed to illustrate that Liverpool’s response was somehow excessive or self-pitying.
— Rory Smith, New York Times, 6 Oct. 2023 -
His kids are conspicuously absent (the ones who matter, so everyone except Connor) and there’s a mopey self-pitying air to Logan’s typically erratic mood.
— Nina Metz, Chicago Tribune, 22 Mar. 2023 -
Jaouad writes about her cancer diagnosis and several-year struggle for health without self-pity, with vulnerability and candor.
— Laura Trujillo, USA TODAY, 28 Mar. 2023 -
Foote is exceptional at portraying this complex, defensive and mercurial character who is mired in self-pity, yet boyishly open in his affection for and dependence on Shawn.
— Pam Kragen, San Diego Union-Tribune, 15 Mar. 2024 -
But even their sweet, tentative romance, predicated on mutual curiosity and real attraction, can’t help but bring out Ben’s ugly side, from his reflexive self-pity to his objectifying, self-loathing assumptions about interracial coupledom.
— Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times, 4 Aug. 2023
Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'self-pity.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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