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Desolate vs Miserable - What's the difference?

desolate | miserable | Synonyms |

Desolate is a synonym of miserable.


As adjectives the difference between desolate and miserable

is that desolate is deserted and devoid of inhabitants while miserable is destitute, impoverished.

As a verb desolate

is to deprive of inhabitants.

As a noun miserable is

wretch, scoundrel.

desolate

English

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • Deserted and devoid of inhabitants.
  • a desolate''' isle; a '''desolate''' wilderness; a '''desolate house
  • * Bible, Jer. ix. 11
  • I will make Jerusalem a den of dragons, and I will make the cities of Judah desolate , without an inhabitant.
  • * Tennyson
  • And the silvery marish flowers that throng / The desolate creeks and pools among.
  • Barren and lifeless.
  • Made unfit for habitation or use; laid waste; neglected; destroyed.
  • desolate altars
  • Dismal or dreary.
  • Sad, forlorn and hopeless.
  • He was left desolate by the early death of his wife.
  • * Keble
  • voice of the poor and desolate

    Verb

    (desolat)
  • To deprive of inhabitants.
  • To devastate or lay waste somewhere.
  • To abandon or forsake something.
  • To make someone sad, forlorn and hopeless.
  • miserable

    English

    Adjective

    (en-adj)
  • In a state of misery: very sad, ill, or poor.
  • *
  • *: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.
  • *, chapter=7
  • , title= The Mirror and the Lamp , passage=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.}}
  • * (George Bernard Shaw) (1856–1950)
  • *:The secret of being miserable is to have the leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure is occupation.
  • Very bad (at something); unskilled, incompetent.
  • :
  • Wretched; worthless; mean.
  • :
  • (lb) Causing unhappiness or misery.
  • *(William Shakespeare) (c.1564–1616)
  • *:What's more miserable than discontent?
  • (lb) Avaricious; niggardly; miserly.
  • :(Hooker)
  • Usage notes

    * Nouns to which "miserable" is often applied: life, condition, state, situation, day, time, creature, person, child, failure, place, world, season, year, week, experience, feeling, work, town, city, wage, job, case, excuse, dog.

    Synonyms

    * See also * See also

    Derived terms

    * miserablism * miserabilism * miserablist * miserabilist