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If you look rueful, your face or your voice shows that you wish you had not done something. It is not wild crying. It is often a small, almost smiling kind of regret — the look of someone who knows they were silly and can see it now. A rueful smile is a very common pairing: you smile, but the smile is full of ah, I messed that up. You can also be rueful about a choice, meaning you feel that quiet regret toward it. The word is a little literary, but careful speakers still use it, and you will read it in stories.
懊悔的、一臉後悔（常搭配 smile）
原始詞典資料3 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
ruefuladj/ˈɹuːfl̩/
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Causing, feeling, or expressing regret or sorrow, especially in a wry or humorous way.
- "I like the young, andro look, but I've dated across the board—butches, femmes, trannies—and that really bothers Clara. All her girlfriends in the past have been pretty much straight." Kim offers a rueful little laugh.
- Merely, he received it with the rueful indulgence that he would show towards Tom when he came through with one of his solutions for ending world poverty or the arms race.
- 2
Inspiring pity or compassion.
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Bad; woeful; deplorable.
- The first who made the experiment was a merry-andrew, who was put into my hands by a neighbouring justice of peace, in order to reclaim him from that profligate kind of life. Poor Pickle-herring had not taken above one turn in it, when he came out of the cave, like a hermit from his cell, with a penitential look and a most rueful countenance.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。