Complete classic literature • Five-line readings • Clear US narration
VELMORA ACADEMY
Academy of Archival Languages & Memory Studies
Menu Close

miserable

adjective US /ˈmɪzərəbəl/

very unhappy; full of misery

How often you will meet it

Rank 1,465 of 71,295 words measured. It occurs 12,558 times across 139,755 chapters — 0.006% of every word in the library.

What it means

adjective

  1. very unhappy; full of misery also: suffering, wretched he felt depressed and miserablea message of hope for suffering humanity
  2. deserving or inciting pity also: hapless, misfortunate, pathetic, piteous, pitiable, pitiful a hapless victimmiserable victims of war
  3. of the most contemptible kind also: abject, low, low-down, scummy, scurvy abject cowardicea low stunt to pull
  4. of very poor quality or condition also: deplorable, execrable, woeful, wretched deplorable housing conditions in the inner citywoeful treatment of the accused
  5. characterized by physical misery also: wretched a wet miserable weekendspent a wretched night on the floor
  6. contemptibly small in amount also: measly, paltry a measly tipthe company donated a miserable $100 for flood relief

CMU Pronouncing Dictionary · Princeton WordNet 3.1

miserable in real books

Each sentence below was written by a published author and is taken from a different book in our library. Open one to read the passage it came from, with narration.

  • I made you lead a miserable existence, spend a joyless youth.

    Other People's Money · Emile Gaboriau · Chapter 1

  • There, just before her father's death, he and she had lived, for four delicious, miserable, momentous weeks.

    Christian's Mistake · Dinah Maria Mulock Craik · Chapter 1

  • I had never confronted a great man before, and was in a miserable state of funk and inefficiency.

    Following the Equator — Part 1 · Mark Twain · Chapter 1

  • He acted kind of miserable at first, and was awfully sarcastic about being a gentleman and not a gas-engineer.

    The Motormaniacs · Lloyd Osbourne · Chapter 1

  • She only said he was jealous and brutal, though a good man at bottom, and that he led her a miserable life.

    The Lerouge Case · Emile Gaboriau · Chapter 1

Nearby in the frequency table

The whole table Read a book