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• s  feeling or expressing pain or sorrow for sins or offenses

• Still in the realm of fantasy, this rueful little fable cut close enough to the essence of lean-year reality to please those who detest animals that behave like humans.
• She sounded almost rueful as she discussed a political environment in which her brand of bipartisan dealmaking sets her apart.
• Beyond his mastery of the issues, Obama revealed a more personal note: a slightly rueful sense that the world was tightening around him, that he would no longer be able to take a .

• contrite
• remorseful
• ruthful

News & Articles

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• Our critic's selections
  Before Midnight Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke return as Celine and Jesse, the young strangers on a heady Viennese walkabout in 1995's Before Sunrise, the couple sharing a rueful Paris reunion in 2004's Before Sunset. Now they are married with children, on vacation in Greece and facing the everyday realities of a relationship, trying to balance careers with filial responsibilities. It's talky and ...
  June 9, 2013 - The Philadelphia Inquirer

Quotes

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• Laura Lippman in San Francisco Chronicle
  The Tess Monaghan books, I've always said, have a rueful belief in human possibility - rueful optimism that sometimes people won't disappoint you,Lippman said. "That probably lines up pretty well with how I am."
• Dmitry Medvedev in AFP
  This type of impossible and unimaginable event occurs not merely because the roads are of rueful quality,Medvedev said in remarks broadcast on state television.
• Avishai Margalit in Israel Insider
  Of the book Siach Lochamim, which was published soon after the Six Day War and featured conversations with soldiers, Margalit wrote: "The clear but unstated message of the book was one of rueful moral self-congratulation: we are beautiful, but we...