commiserative

The bartender was a young woman who looked at my face and gave me a commiserative pout.

They saw me too and laughed a warm and commiserative laugh.

Six centuries ago, the noun began to be applied to people, and since 1780, reports the Oxford English Dictionary, "often applied with commiserative force to children poorly, raggedly or untidily clothed."

Coleman naturally lent a commiserative ear, and was soon able to provide Donleavy with a complete run-down on the DEA's network of informants in Beirut and the Bekaa Valley.

Syrian Americans were also part of the Arab American Institute, established in 1985, which supports and promotes Arab American candidates, or candidates commiserative with Arabs and Arab Americans, for office.

Mr. Tessler is rigorous and commiserative alike, and his gloss on the fallout from the creation of Israel, which included a counterflow of millions of Jewish immigrants from the Arab world, is among the best things in the book.

The use of urchin by writers continues to have what the O.E.D. aptly described as "commiserative force," in which adult irritation with the child's prickly behavior is ameliorated by sympathy for the kid's economic condition or grudging admiration for what John McCain's mother called a "scamp."