miserable

comparative more miserable · superlative most miserable

1. In a state of misery: very sad, ill, or poor.

   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

   1910, George Bernard Shaw, A Treatise on Parents and Children

   2 more examples

   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.

   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

   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.

   1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter VII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC

   Synonyms: atrabiliary, atrabilious, blitheless, dispirited, blue, bummed out, chapfallen, cheerless

2. Very bad (at something); unskilled, incompetent; hopeless.

   He's good at some sports, like tennis, but he's just miserable at football.

   Synonyms: amateurish, backwards, bad, bungling, clumsy, ham-fisted, ham-handed, inapt

3. Of the weather, extremely unpleasant due to being cold, wet, overcast, etc.

   Synonyms: cheerless, comfortless, bleak, dark, morose, depressing, desolate, dire

4. Wretched; worthless; mean; contemptible.

   a miserable sinner

   1 more example

   In a month's collecting at Wonosalem and Djapannan I accumulated ninety-eight species of birds, but a most miserable lot of insects.

   1869, Alfred Russel Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, volume I, London: Macmillan and Co., page 172

   Synonyms: abject, filthy, base, beggarly, blameworthy, carrion, cheap, choical

5. obsoleteCausing unhappiness or misery.

   For what's more miserable than discontent?

   c. 1596–1599 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Second Part of Henry the Fourth, […]. Epilogue.”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene i]

   Synonyms: atrabiliary, atrabilious, deplorable, depressing, distressing, grievous, heartbreaking, heartrending

6. obsoleteAvaricious; niggardly; miserly.

   the liberal-hearted man is by the opinion of the prodigal miserable, and by the judgment of the miserable lavish

   [1594], Richard Hooker, edited by J[ohn] S[penser], Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie, […], London: […] Iohn Windet, […], →OCLC, (please specify the page)

   Synonyms: as tight as Dick's hatband, cheap, cheeseparing, chintzy, close, close as wax, close-fisted, illiberal

7. Negative minded, unpleasant to be around.

plural miserables

1. A miserable person; a wretch.

   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.

   1838, The Foreign Quarterly Review, volume 21, page 181

   1 more example

   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.

   2003, Richard C. Trexler, Reliving Golgotha: The Passion Play of Iztapalapa, pages 46–47

2. in pluralinformalwith definite articleA state of misery or melancholy.

   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.

   1984, Barbara Wernecke Durkin, Oh, You Dundalk Girls, Can't You Dance the Polka?, page 10