Origins
The word 'pity' is one half of a remarkable doublet — a pair of English words descended from the same Latin source but borrowed at different times with different meanings. 'Pity' and 'piety' both derive from Latin 'pietās' (dutifulness, devotion, loyalty, tenderness, compassion), from 'pius' (devout, dutiful, loyal). 'Pity' entered English in the thirteenth century through Old French 'pité' with the meaning 'compassion for suffering,' while 'piety' was borrowed later, in the fourteenth century, more directly from Latin with the meaning 'religious devotion.' The same word became two English words with different — but related — meanings.
In classical Latin, 'pietās' was a complex virtue that combined religious devotion, filial loyalty, patriotic duty, and tenderness toward the suffering. The most famous embodiment of 'pietās' in Latin literature is Virgil's Aeneas, whose defining epithet is 'pius Aeneas' — Aeneas the dutiful, the devoted, the man who carries his aged father on his back from burning Troy. Aeneas's 'pietās' is not primarily compassion but duty: loyalty to family, obedience to the gods, and devotion to his destined mission.
The shift from 'duty' to 'compassion' occurred in late Latin and early Old French, where the emotional dimension of 'pietās' — tenderness, sympathy for suffering — gradually overshadowed the moral dimension of duty. By the time it reached English as 'pity,' the word had narrowed to focus almost exclusively on the feeling of sorrow aroused by another's misfortune.
Latin Roots
Italian 'pietà' preserves the original breadth of the Latin word more fully than either English 'pity' or 'piety.' Michelangelo's famous marble sculpture, the 'Pietà' (1498–1499), depicts the Virgin Mary holding the dead body of Christ across her lap. The title means both 'pity' (the sorrow she feels) and 'piety' (the devout submission to God's will). The Italian word holds together what English has split apart.
The word 'pity' has an ambivalent status in modern English. It can express genuine compassion ('I pity anyone who has to endure that') or condescension ('Don't pity me'). To 'take pity on' someone is generous; to be 'pitied' is often experienced as humiliating. Nietzsche famously attacked pity ('Mitleid' in German) as a weakness that diminishes both the giver and the receiver — an emotion that masks contempt as compassion. This tension between pity as virtue and pity as condescension has haunted the word since at least the eighteenth century.
The adjective 'pitiful' has undergone its own semantic shift. Originally meaning 'full of pity' (compassionate), it now primarily means 'arousing pity' (pathetic, inadequate). A 'pitiful performance' is not one that shows compassion but one that deserves it. 'Pitiless' (without pity) has remained stable as a term of condemnation — to be pitiless is to lack what most moral systems consider a basic human virtue.