How to Use rueful in a Sentence

rueful

adjective
Definition of ruefulnext
Synonyms for ruefulnext
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • God Save Texas is author Lawrence Wright’s affectionate, eye-opening, and, at times, rueful love letter to his native state.
    — Kevin O’Kelly, The Christian Science Monitor, 19 Apr. 2018
  • His 2006 debut feature, was a rueful comedy about the meaning of revolution, as a word and a concept.
    — Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times, 26 Feb. 2020

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'rueful.' 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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