Miserable Meaning
/ˈmɪz(ə)ɹəbəl/Definition, CEFR level B1, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
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Definition
adjIn a state of misery: very sad, ill, or poor.
adjVery bad (at something); unskilled, incompetent; hopeless.
Sentence Examples
A miserable sequence of defeats discouraged us.
The experiment resulted in a miserable failure.
The sight was too miserable to look at.
CEFR Practice Quiz
The cold rain and lost wallet made him feel completely ____ today.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The weather during our beach vacation was absolutely ____, with heavy rain and strong winds blowing almost every single day.
Word Origin & History
Borrowed from Middle French miserable, from Old French, from Latin miserabilis, equivalent to miser + -able.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"Thanks to that penny he had just spent so recklessly [on a newspaper] he would pass a happy hour, taken, for once, out of his anxious, despondent, miserable self. It irritated him shrewdly to know that these moments of respite from carking care would not be shared with his poor wife, with careworn, troubled Ellen."
— 1913, Mrs. [Marie] Belloc Lowndes, chapter I, in The Lodger, London: Methuen, →OCLC; republished in Novels of Mystery: The Lodger; The Story of Ivy; What Really Happened, New York, N.Y.: Longmans, Green and Co., […], [1933], →OCLC, page 0056:
"With some of it on the south and more of it on the north of the great main thoroughfare that connects Aldgate and the East India Docks, St. Bede's at this period of its history was perhaps the poorest and most miserable parish in the East End of London."
— 1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter VII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:
"The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation, because occupation means pre-occupation"
— 1910, George Bernard Shaw, A Treatise on Parents and Children:
"In a month's collecting at Wonosalem and Djapannan I accumulated ninety-eight species of birds, but a most miserable lot of insects."
— 1869, Alfred Russel Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, volume I, London: Macmillan and Co., page 172:
"For what's more miserable than discontent?"
— c. 1596–1599 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Second Part of Henry the Fourth, […]. Epilogue.”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene i]:
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CEFR Practice Quiz
The cold rain and lost wallet made him feel completely ____ today.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The weather during our beach vacation was absolutely ____, with heavy rain and strong winds blowing almost every single day.