miserable

Pluralmiserables

1. 1
   adjective

   Suffering misery; deeply sad, ill, or poor.

   After weeks without work, he grew miserable and withdrawn.

   The stranded travelers were cold, hungry, and utterly miserable.

   Similardepressed, sad, dejected, downcast, gloomy

   Oppositehappy, cheerful, content, joyful

   Note

   The sense the rest of the word grows from. It was borrowed through Middle and Old French from Latin miserabilis, built from miser plus -able. It covers poverty as readily as sadness. W. B. Maxwell's The Mirror and the Lamp (1918) calls a parish "the poorest and most miserable," and the word there describes hardship, not mood. George Bernard Shaw, in A Treatise on Parents and Children (1910), offers its cure: occupation.

2. 2
   adjective

   Of weather, extremely unpleasant from being cold, wet or overcast.

   A miserable drizzle hung over the city all weekend.

   The hikers turned back once conditions became truly miserable.

   Similardreary, bleak, gloomy, dismal, grim

   Oppositepleasant, fine, glorious

3. 3
   adjective

   Wretched or contemptible; worthless and deserving scorn.

   The landlord gave his tenants a miserable, leaking shack to live in.

   She dismissed his miserable attempt at an apology with a wave.

   Similarcontemptible, despicable, base, wretched, ignoble

   Oppositeadmirable, worthy

4. 4
   adjective

   Hopelessly bad at doing something; utterly lacking in skill or competence.

   She's a miserable liar, and everyone sees through her at once.

   The team was miserable on defense throughout the entire season.

   Similarincompetent, bad, clumsy, inept, unskilled

   Oppositeskilled, competent, expert

   Note

   Here the word takes at, just as its opposite good does: someone good at tennis can be miserable at football. That construction is what separates it from the feeling of misery. A player who is miserable at a game is a poor player, not necessarily an unhappy one. When the word stands alone before a noun, the context has to tell the reader which meaning is intended.

5. 5
   nouncolloquialpluralwith the

   A spell of misery or low spirits.

   The miserables crept over him once the holidays ended and the house went quiet.

   He sank into the miserables for days after the funeral.

   Similarblues, doldrums, dumps

   Note

   A mood noun that comes in one fixed shape: plural, with the in front. You get the miserables, or a bad case of the miserables, never a single miserable. It belongs to casual talk. Its plural should not be confused with that of the noun for a wretch, which counts people. In Barbara Wernecke Durkin's Oh, You Dundalk Girls, Can't You Dance the Polka? (1984), soaked pants are enough to bring it on.

6. 6
   nouncountable

   A wretched or pitiable person.

   The old miserable begged for coins outside the church gate.

   She took in every stray miserable who knocked at her door.

   Similarwretch, unfortunate

   Note

   The adjective turned into a noun for people, and it is often used in the plural after these. The Foreign Quarterly Review of 1838 and Richard C. Trexler's Reliving Golgotha (2003) both write "these miserables," with a note of pity or scorn. Keep it apart from the miserables as a mood, where the same plural names a feeling rather than a group of people.

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