misery
Pluralmiseries (some meanings)
- 1Great unhappiness, or extreme pain of body or mind; deep distress or wretchedness.
The famine brought untold misery to thousands of families.
She hid her misery behind a calm and polite smile.
Similarunhappiness, sadness, sorrow, distress, grief
Oppositehappiness, joy, contentment, bliss
Note
The central meaning the others branch from came through Middle English miserie and Old French from Latin miseria. Modern French still has misère, a doublet that English also uses. In English, misery is often something heaped on people: Nigel Harris, writing in RAIL in 2022, describes train cancellations that heaped further misery on rail users. Utter is its natural intensifier, as in utter misery.
- 2A cause of unhappiness; a calamity or misfortune that brings suffering.
The war was the greatest misery the region had ever endured.
Each new misery seemed to pile upon the last until the town despaired.
Similarhardship, adversity, affliction, distress, misfortune
- 3Extreme poverty; a condition of being very poor and lacking the means to live decently.
Decades of unemployment had reduced the village to utter misery.
She escaped a childhood of misery and built a stable, comfortable life.
Similarpoverty, destitution, neediness, penury, indigence
Oppositewealth, affluence, prosperity
Note
Here misery is a material condition rather than a feeling. The Life and Death of Iacke Straw (1593) sets the rich, who "haue all," against the poor who "liue in miserie." Live in misery is still the typical frame. Because the same phrase can describe deep unhappiness, context such as money, housing or hunger tells the reader which is meant.
- 4A bodily ache or pain, especially a persistent or nagging one.
She rubbed liniment on the misery in her shoulder before bed.
The old man groaned about the misery in his joints all winter long.
Note
Regional speech in both Britain and the United States keeps this concrete, countable use. It usually takes an article and the preposition in: John Vestal Hadley, in Seven Months a Prisoner (1868), had "a misery in my left breast and shoulder." Outside dialect it sounds folksy or old-fashioned, so plain writing is better served by ache or pain.
He's had a misery in his back since the harvest.
Grandma complained of a misery in her knees every winter.
Less common meaning
- 5Greed or avarice; an excessive love of wealth and unwillingness to part with it.
Such was his misery that he begrudged his own family their daily bread.
The merchant's misery drove him to cheat even his closest friends out of a few coins.
Similargreed, avarice, greediness, covetousness, cupidity
Note
An archaic sense, and the one closest to miser, the word misery is built on. A modern reader will hear deep unhappiness instead, so a line like "such was his misery" is easily misread. Outside deliberately period writing, avarice or miserliness says the same thing without the confusion.
Practice
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Origin
From Middle English miserie, borrowed through Old French miserie (modern misère) from Latin miseria, itself from miser ("wretched"). It is a doublet of misère and mizeria.