How to Use rueful in a Sentence

rueful

adjective
  • He gave me a rueful smile and apologized.
  • Her lips pressed in a rueful grin.
    — Richard Greenberg, Los Angeles Times, 6 Feb. 2026
  • The word rueful comes up a lot about his smile or his demeanor.
    — Shirley Li, The Atlantic, 11 Aug. 2022
  • Streisand sings it with astute, rueful humor and a touch of heartache.
    — Tom Gliatto, Peoplemag, 18 Nov. 2023
  • Even the surprise at the end invites rueful head-shaking rather than gasps.
    — Toby Zinman, Philly.com, 3 Nov. 2017
  • 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
  • But most of my friends grimace and then, after a rueful joke, move on to other topics.
    — Vinson Cunningham, The New Yorker, 11 Oct. 2024
  • Wyle’s face — rueful, furious, gentle, world weary — looks like this year has felt.
    — Roxana Hadadi, Vulture, 1 Dec. 2025
  • What’s a cocky teenage boy to an English teacher in middle life and his rueful wife?
    — Amanda Whiting, Vulture, 18 Oct. 2024
  • Of course, in general, blue-collar folks are gonna be pranksters, and funny, and rueful.
    — Aric Jenkins, Fortune, 29 Jan. 2020
  • The designer laughed, shook her head with a little rueful humor.
    — Rachel Elspeth Gross, Forbes.com, 11 May 2025
  • My feverish brain wanted to make rueful meaning of that moment in real time.
    — Hazlitt, 13 June 2022
  • 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
  • In On the Record’s later scenes, these comments take on a more rueful valence.
    — Hannah Giorgis, The Atlantic, 1 June 2020
  • Glossy summer cityscapes and arty cold opens provide tasteful settings for the show’s rueful patter.
    — Richard Lawson, HWD, 2 Apr. 2018
  • The book also has a complicated, somewhat rueful take on race.
    — Charles McGrath, The Atlantic, 8 Oct. 2024
  • 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
  • There were rueful headshakes, the mixing timbres of semiforced laughter.
    — Aaron Gilbreath, Longreads, 6 Apr. 2018
  • Knowing laughter rippled through the audience as Smith cracked a rueful smile.
    — Erika D. Smithcolumnist, Los Angeles Times, 28 Mar. 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
  • Instead Kidman was wry, rueful, unsure of herself.
    — Wendell Steavenson, Vogue, 8 Oct. 2025
  • The tone throughout Strength is by turns optimistic, rueful, and paternal.
    — Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 17 Nov. 2023
  • 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
  • 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
  • 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
  • This is a persuasive concept, one that maps easily onto the score and gets at its rash youthfulness and rueful adulthood.
    — Joshua Barone, New York Times, 4 Apr. 2024
  • Nothing’s third episode, Kris Kristofferson’s rueful ballad is very much the latter.
    — Sophie Brookover, Vulture, 24 Dec. 2024

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.

Last Updated: