miserable
See also: misérable
English edit
Etymology edit
Borrowed from Middle French miserable, from Old French, from Latin miserabilis.
Pronunciation edit
Adjective edit
miserable (comparative more miserable, superlative most miserable)
- In a state of misery: very sad, ill, or poor.
- 1913, Mrs. [Marie] Belloc Lowndes, chapter I, in The Lodger, London: Methuen, →OCLC; republished in Novels of Mystery: The Lodger; The Story of Ivy; What Really Happened, New York, N.Y.: Longmans, Green and Co., […], [1933], →OCLC, page 0056:
- Thanks to that penny he had just spent so recklessly [on a newspaper] he would pass a happy hour, taken, for once, out of his anxious, despondent, miserable self. It irritated him shrewdly to know that these moments of respite from carking care would not be shared with his poor wife, with careworn, troubled Ellen.
- 1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter VII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:
- With some of it on the south and more of it on the north of the great main thoroughfare that connects Aldgate and the East India Docks, St. Bede's at this period of its history was perhaps the poorest and most miserable parish in the East End of London.
- 1910, George Bernard Shaw, A Treatise on Parents and Children[1]:
- The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation, because occupation means pre-occupation
- Very bad (at something); unskilled, incompetent; hopeless.
- He's good at some sports, like tennis, but he's just miserable at football.
- Of the weather, extremely unpleasant due to being cold, wet, overcast, etc.
- Wretched; worthless; mean; contemptible.
- a miserable sinner
- (obsolete) Causing unhappiness or misery.
- c. 1596–1599 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Second Part of Henry the Fourth, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene i]:
- For what's more miserable than discontent?
- (obsolete) Avaricious; niggardly; miserly.
- 1594–1597, Richard Hooker, edited by J[ohn] S[penser], Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie, […], London: […] Will[iam] Stansby [for Matthew Lownes], published 1611, →OCLC, (please specify the page):
- the liberal-hearted man is by the opinion of the prodigal miserable, and by the judgment of the miserable lavish
Synonyms edit
- (in a state of misery): See Thesaurus:sad or Thesaurus:lamentable
- (very bad (at)): See Thesaurus:unskilled
- (wretched): See Thesaurus:despicable or Thesaurus:insignificant
- (causing unhappiness): See Thesaurus:lamentable
- (miserly): See Thesaurus:stingy or Thesaurus:greedy
Derived terms edit
- immiseration, immiserization
- miserabilism
- miserabilist
- miserable as a wet hen
- miserablism
- miserablist
Related terms edit
Collocations edit
with nouns
- miserable life
- miserable condition
- miserable state
- miserable situation
- miserable day
- miserable time
- miserable creature
- miserable person
- miserable child
- miserable failure
- miserable place
- miserable world
- miserable season
- miserable year
- miserable week
- miserable experience
- miserable feeling
- miserable work
- miserable town
- miserable city
- miserable job
- miserable case
- miserable excuse
- miserable dog
miserable birds
Translations edit
in a state of misery
|
very bad (at)
|
wretched
Noun edit
miserable (plural miserables)
- A miserable person; a wretch.
- 1838, The Foreign Quarterly Review, volume 21, page 181:
- Dona Carmen repaired to the balcony to chat and jest with, and at, these miserables, who stopped before the door to rest in their progress. All pretended poverty while literally groaning under the weight of their riches.
- 2003, Richard C. Trexler, Reliving Golgotha: The Passion Play of Iztapalapa, pages 46–47:
- The charge that those who played Jesus in these representations were treated badly by the plays' Jews and Romans left one commissioner cold: in his view, these miserables were beaten much less severely by the players than they were by their actual lords or curacas.
- (informal, in the plural, with definite article) A state of misery or melancholy.
- 1984, Barbara Wernecke Durkin, Oh, You Dundalk Girls, Can't You Dance the Polka?, page 10:
- By 3:00 P.M. both DeeDee and Sandra's pants were thoroughly soaked, and this unhappy circumstance gave DeeDee a bad case of the miserables.
Anagrams edit
Catalan edit
Etymology edit
Learned borrowing from Latin miserābilis.
Pronunciation edit
Adjective edit
miserable m or f (masculine and feminine plural miserables)
German edit
Pronunciation edit
Audio (file)
Adjective edit
miserable
- inflection of miserabel:
Spanish edit
Etymology edit
Learned borrowing from Latin miserābilis.
Pronunciation edit
Adjective edit
miserable m or f (masculine and feminine plural miserables)
Derived terms edit
Related terms edit
Further reading edit
- “miserable”, in Diccionario de la lengua española, Vigésima tercera edición, Real Academia Española, 2014