Miserable vs Pity - What's the difference?
miserable | pity |
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= * (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)
(uncountable) A feeling of sympathy at the misfortune or suffering of someone or something.
* Bible, Proverbs xix. 17
* Shakespeare
*, Folio Society, 2006, p.5:
(countable) Something regrettable.
* Laurence Sterne
* Addison
(obsolete) piety
To feel pity for (someone or something).
* Bible, Psalms ciii. 13
* 1596 , (Edmund Spenser), The Faerie Queene , IV.11:
* Book of Common Prayer
Short form of what a pity.
In obsolete terms the difference between miserable and pity
is that miserable is avaricious; niggardly; miserly while pity is piety.As an adjective miserable
is in a state of misery: very sad, ill, or poor.As a noun pity is
a feeling of sympathy at the misfortune or suffering of someone or something.As a verb pity is
to feel pity for (someone or something).As an interjection pity is
short form of what a pity.miserable
English
Adjective
(en-adj)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.}}
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 alsoDerived terms
* miserablism * miserabilism * miserablist * miserabilistpity
English
Alternative forms
* pitty (obsolete)Noun
- He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the Lord.
- Hehas no more pity in him than a dog.
- The most usuall way to appease those minds we have offendedis, by submission to move them to commiseration and pitty .
- It's a pity you're feeling unwell because there's a party on tonight.
- It was a thousand pities .
- What pity is it / That we can die but once to serve our country!
- (Wyclif)
Synonyms
* (mercy) ruth * (something regrettable) shameVerb
(en-verb)- Like as a father pitieth' his children, so the Lord ' pitieth them that fear him.
- She lenger yet is like captiv'd to bee; / That even to thinke thereof it inly pitties mee.
- It pitieth them to see her in the dust.