Wretched vs Awful - What's the difference?
wretched | awful | Related terms |
Very miserable; sunk in, or accompanied by, deep affliction or distress, as from want, anxiety, or grief; calamitous; woeful; very afflicting.
* {{quote-book, year=1918, author=(w)
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Worthless; paltry; very poor or mean; miserable.
* {{quote-book, year=1864, author=(Fyodor Dostoyevsky), title=Notes from Underground, chapter=1
*, chapter=17
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* {{quote-news, year=2011, date=April 11, author=Phil McNulty, work=BBC Sport
, title= (obsolete) Hatefully contemptible; despicable; wicked.
Oppressing with fear or horror; appalling, terrible.
Inspiring awe; filling with profound reverence or respect; profoundly impressive.
*, I.56:
* 1819 , Lord Byron, Don Juan , II.143:
Struck or filled with awe.
(obsolete) Terror-stricken.
Worshipful; reverential; law-abiding.
Exceedingly great; usually applied intensively.
Very bad.
(colloquial) Very, extremely; as, an awful big house.
Wretched is a related term of awful.
In obsolete|lang=en terms the difference between wretched and awful
is that wretched is (obsolete) hatefully contemptible; despicable; wicked while awful is (obsolete) terror-stricken.As adjectives the difference between wretched and awful
is that wretched is very miserable; sunk in, or accompanied by, deep affliction or distress, as from want, anxiety, or grief; calamitous; woeful; very afflicting while awful is oppressing with fear or horror; appalling, terrible.As an adverb awful is
(colloquial) very, extremely; as, an awful big house.wretched
English
(Webster 1913)Adjective
(en-adj)citation, passage=As for me, I felt wretched and helpless, in the darkness, surrounded with angry waves, whose noise deafened me.}}
citation, passage=My room is a wretched , horrid one in the outskirts of the town.}}
The Mirror and the Lamp, passage=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.}}
- All 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,.
Liverpool 3-0 Man City, passage=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. }}
Usage notes
* Nouns to which "wretched" is often applied: woman, state, life, condition, creature, man, excess, person, place, world, being, situation, weather, slave, animal, city, village, health, house, town.Quotations
* To what wretched state reserved! Milton * Wretched ungratefulness . Sir Philip Sidney * Wrechet World King LearSynonyms
* See alsoDerived terms
* wretchednessExternal links
* *awful
English
Alternative forms
* awfull (archaic)Adjective
(en-adj)- God ought not to be commixed in our actions, but with awful reverence, and an attention full of honour and respect.
- And then she stopped, and stood as if in awe / (For sleep is awful ).
- an awful bonnet
- I have learnt an awful amount today.
- My socks smell awful .