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Definition of "miserable" []

  • Very uncomfortable or unhappy; wretched. (adjective)
  • Causing or accompanied by great discomfort or distress: a miserable climate. (adjective)
  • Mean or shameful; contemptible: a miserable trick. (adjective)
  • Wretchedly inadequate: lived in a miserable shack; fed the prisoners miserable rations. (adjective)
  • Of poor quality; inferior: miserable handicraft. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Use "miserable" in a sentence
  • "As for Ester, she prayed, in her clothes-press, thankfully for Dr. Douglass, more hopefully for Sadie, and knew not that a corner of the poor little letter which had slipped from Julia's hand and floated down the stream one summer morning, thereby causing her such a miserable, _miserable_ day, was lying at that moment in Dr. Douglass 'note-book, counted as the most precious of all his precious bits of paper."
  • "I know, 'cried Eugénie de Netteville at last, standing at bay before him, her hands locked before her, her white lips quivering, when her cup of shame was full, and her one impulse left was to strike the man who had humiliated her --' I know that you and your puritanical wife are miserable -- _miserable_."
  • "I know, 'cried Eugénie de Netteville at last, standing at bay before him, her hands locked before her, her white lips quivering, when her cup of shame was full, and her one impulse left was to strike the man who had humiliated her-'I know that you and your puritanical wife are miserable -- _miserable_."