What's the difference between
and
Enter two words to compare and contrast their definitions, origins, and synonyms to better understand how those words are related.

Miserable vs Despairing - What's the difference?

miserable | despairing | Related terms |

Miserable is a related term of despairing.


As adjectives the difference between miserable and despairing

is that miserable is destitute, impoverished while despairing is feeling, expressing, or caused by despair; hopeless.

As nouns the difference between miserable and despairing

is that miserable is wretch, scoundrel while despairing is a mood or display of despair.

As a verb despairing is

.

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

    despairing

    English

    Adjective

    (-)
  • Feeling, expressing, or caused by despair; hopeless.

    • Verb

    (head)

    • Noun

    (en noun)
  • A mood or display of despair.
  • * (Thomas Carlyle)
    • But what things soever passed in him, when he ceased to see it; what ragings and despairings soever Teufelsdrockh's soul was the scene of, he has the goodness to conceal under a quite opaque cover of Silence.