[ adj ] feeling or expressing pain or sorrow for sins or offenses <adj.all>
Rueful \Rue"ful\, a. 1. Causing one to rue or lament; woeful; mournful; sorrowful.
2. Expressing sorrow. ``Rueful faces.'' --Dryden.
Two rueful figures, with long black cloaks. --Sir W. Scott. ※ -- {Rue"ful*ly}, adv. -- {Rue"ful*ness}, n.
But as a teacher, I reached a few rueful conclusions: First, students do not take seriously the mechanics of writing.
Newtonchik concludes his "rueful autopsy" by noting he is not yet dead.
And Welles's own taste, far from favouring the gimmicky, prefers the elegiac Ambersons to the tricksy Kane, the rueful Chimes At Midnight to the bizarre The Lady From Shanghai.
But amid the protests and finger-pointing, there was also rueful acknowledgment that the fiercely competitive popular tabloids sometimes go too far.
The tone here is rueful rather than angry, and that's why it's the best thing in the museum.
"I thought I was eating him alive," recalled a rueful Mr. Bailey of a long-ago debate.
His rueful expression first typecast him as a coward and a weakling, although maturity brought him a greater variety of roles.
One rueful CEO says: 'If everything is a priority, then nothing is a priority.