The phrase "a pitiable state" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe a situation or condition that evokes sympathy or compassion due to its unfortunate nature.
Example: "After the storm, the town was left in a pitiable state, with homes destroyed and families displaced."
Alternatives: "a lamentable condition" or "a deplorable situation."
From the wreckage I've rescued barely a thousand words in a pitiable state.
Chinese soccer is in a pitiable state because of endemic corruption and a lack of professionalism, and there are plans for Italy, home to some of the world's greatest teams, to train Chinese players, especially young ones, in the new stadium, CCTV reported.
The country's first culture minister was appointed two years ago, but the ministry produces few ideas about how to save, let alone promote, Nigeria's heritage.The ancient walled cities of Benin, in the south, and Kano, in the north, are in a pitiable state of decay.
Composers, for example – the people who are, after all, the heart of the artform – are in a pitiable state in this country, on average earning just £3,700 a year from their music, according to a study published by Sound and Music last year.
I still have a faint recollection of a boat ride, which was – and still is – considered a must-do by tourists, despite the pitiable state of the river.
The "cautious" dates from a trip to Texas in the mid-seventies, for a book that introduced me to the pitiable state of industrial feedlot cattle, crammed into pens to be fattened on quasi-chemical feed laced with antibiotics and hormones, to say nothing of the frantic baying of ranch yearlings driven through chutes to be branded and cut by cowhands, their testicles fed to the foreman's dogs.
It highlighted negligible military leadership, poor troop morale and training, problematic frontline logistics, shoddy equipment, and the generally pitiable state of Spain's colonial army.
The party is stuck in a miserable warp that locks out the country's crying unresolved issues, and there's no one in the wings with the integrity, intellect and command to drag it out of its pitiable state.
Nonetheless, Jasmine is, perhaps through her state of pathos, and/or because she, like her sister is an adoptee, a pitiable character, a name-changing self-inventor-turned-self-deceiver who gets played by a hollow man in a world as groundless and dangerously superficial as she allowed her existence to become.
But many have a pitiable quality for their neglect.
Politically and economically Nasser had left me a pitiable legacy.
