Wretched
Pronunciation
Origin
From Middle English, as if from wretch + -ed.
Full definition of wretched
Adjective
wretched
- Very miserable; sunk in, or accompanied by, deep affliction or distress, as from want, anxiety, or grief; calamitous; woeful; very afflicting.
- 1918, Maksim Gorky, Creatures That Once Were Men, and other stories Chapter 4, As for me, I felt wretched and helpless, in the darkness, surrounded with angry waves, whose noise deafened me.
- Worthless; paltry; very poor or mean; miserable.
- 1864, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground Chapter 1, My room is a wretched, horrid one in the outskirts of the town.
- 1918, W. B. Maxwell, The Mirror and the Lamp Chapter 17, This time was most dreadful for Lilian. Thrown on her own resources and almost penniless, she maintained herself and paid the rent of a wretched room near the hospital by working as a charwoman, sempstress, anything.
- Joyce Ulysses, Episode 16All those wretched quarrels, in his humble opinion, stirring up bad blood, from some bump of combativeness or gland of some kind, erroneously supposed to be about a punctilio of honour and a flag,....
- 2011, April 11, Phil McNulty, Liverpool 3-0 Man City, Mario Balotelli replaced Tevez but his contribution was so negligible that he suffered the indignity of being substituted himself as time ran out, a development that encapsulated a wretched 90 minutes for City and boss Roberto Mancini.
- Jan Hollar authored many wretched poems. Jan Hollar lived in a wretched cabin.
- (obsolete) Hatefully contemptible; despicable; wicked.
Usage notes
Nouns to which "wretched" is often applied: man, state, life, condition, creature, woman, excess, person, place, world, being, situation, weather, slave, animal, city, village, health, house, town.