The phrase "almost pitiful" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe a situation, action, or condition that evokes a sense of sympathy or sadness, but not to a full extent.
Example: "The abandoned puppy looked almost pitiful as it shivered in the cold rain."
Alternatives: "somewhat sad" or "nearly pathetic."
That Britain is ruled by a Conservative administration that has shifted to David Cameron's right, and that feels rather amused – almost pitiful – about Labour's plight, will all be forgotten.
But the surreal triumphalism of Tories and pundits – who are desperate to return to a world before Jeremy Corbyn's Labour won 40% of the vote and ended a generation-old political consensus – is almost pitiful.
They've implied that it was sad, almost pitiful, that an adolescent obsession - or maybe it was in fact a psychological compulsion - should have been allowed to marginalise what they optimistically had hoped might have been a serious body of work.
Rangers were still a basket case, a wounded and almost pitiful animal.
He could take the most pitiful souls – his CV was populated almost exclusively by snivelling wretches, insufferable prigs, braggarts and outright bullies – and imbue each of them with a wrenching humanity.
Decades later, though, she has degenerated into a fat slattern in teetery high heels; when she attempts to wangle favors from her onetime lover, Rita is by turns disgusting and pitiful — like almost anyone who has wanted something very badly.
When that wedding guest gave me that pitiful look, I could almost sense her scanning me for some fault.
At first they seem almost amused by his impudence: look at this pitiful weebl, trying to roll back the years.
Downing shows the RAF as a pitiful giant that by 1939 had forgotten almost everything it had learned about photographic reconnaissance and interpretation in the first world war.
("I have more just cause to make a pitiful defense of poor Poetry, which from almost the highest estimation of learning, is fallen to be the laughing stock of children," Sidney began the "Defense".
