miserable

miserable, wretched both describe something (as a person's state of health or of mind, a state of affairs, a human being with reference to his condition or character, or a thing compared with others of its kind) that is deplorably or contemptibly bad or mean.

A person is miserable if in misery or in a state either of extreme or acute distress of body or mind

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[Plato] would forbid any novelist to represent a good man as ever miserable— Ellis

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Gideon has been absolutely miserable, and gone about like a man half stunned, ever since it happened— Rose Macaulay

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or of pitiable poverty or degradation

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a miserable creature of a crazed aspect. . . shattered and made drunk by horror— Dickens

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A thing is miserable when it is exceedingly mean or paltry, and provocative only of misery in the person affected or of strong distress or dislike in the observer

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a miserable cold

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a miserable dinner

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the squalor of mean and miserable streets— Binyon

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A person is wretched who is extremely unhappy or abjectly despondent (as from want, grief, oppression, affliction, or anxiety); a thing that relates closely to the happiness of a person is wretched if it produces such dejection or mental suffering

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O cruel death! To those you are more kind than to the wretched mortals left behind— Waller

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it was her unhappy lot to be made more wretched by the only affection which she could not suspect— Conrad

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she's "poor Ellen" certainly, because she had the bad luck to make a wretched marriage— Wharton

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A thing, in general, is wretched if it is extremely or deplorably bad

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a wretched French cabaret, smelling vilely— Meredith

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wretched crops

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it was the wretched truth, and not something I had conjured out of imagination— Deasy

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Analogous words: forlorn, hopeless, despairing, *despondent: pitiable, piteous, *pitiful: doleful, dolorous, *melancholy

Antonyms: comfortable