Source — Wiktionary, "lítost" (Czech)
- Title: lítost
- Publication: English Wiktionary (Czech-language entry, no English-language section)
- URL: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lítost
- Accessed: 2026-09-03
- Type: tertiary (crowdsourced but citation-disciplined lexicographic source, per this project's standing treatment of Wiktionary).
Extract
Part of speech: noun, feminine.
Etymology: derived from the verb litovat ("to regret, to be sorry") plus the abstract-noun suffix -ost. Litovat is inherited from Old Czech ľutovati ("to be angry, to rage; to be sorry"), from Proto-Slavic *ľutovati, from *ľutъ. The adjective lítý is inherited separately from Old Czech ľútý, from the same Proto-Slavic *ľutъ. The page notes the semantic shift from lítý's original sense "ferocious" to the "feeling sorry" sense may have been influenced by the set phrase Je mi líto ("I am sorry").
Definitions given (ordinary Czech dictionary senses, not Kundera's literary elaboration):
- "regret" (example collocation: vyvolat lítost, "to evoke regret").
- "remorse, repentance" — glossed as "a feeling of regret or remorse for doing wrong."
Related terms: litovat (verb); lítostivý (adjective, "pitiful/compassionate"); nelítostný (adjective, "pitiless, merciless"); sebelítost (noun, "self-pity").
Note: this page has no English-language section at all — unlike several other words on this project's file (e.g. jugaad, ubuntu, gezellig, lagom), lítost has not been entered into English Wiktionary as a loanword in its own right.
Gaps
- The page's own ordinary-dictionary glosses ("regret," "remorse, repentance") are considerably narrower and less dramatic than Kundera's literary definition ("a state of torment created by the sudden sight of one's own misery") — see
wikipedia-the-book-of-laughter-and-forgetting.md. This project treats the two as distinct: an everyday Czech emotion word vs. one novelist's own definitional elaboration of it.