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Miserable vs Sorrow - What's the difference?

miserable | sorrow |

As an adjective miserable

is in a state of misery: very sad, ill, or poor.

As a noun sorrow is

unhappiness, woe.

As a verb sorrow is

to feel or express grief.

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

    sorrow

    English

    Noun

  • (uncountable) unhappiness, woe
  • * Rambler
    • The safe and general antidote against sorrow is employment.
  • (countable) (usually in plural) An instance or cause of unhappiness.
    • Parting is such sweet sorrow .

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • To feel or express grief.
  • * 1749 , Henry Fielding, Tom Jones , Folio Society 1973, p. 424:
    • ‘Sorrow not, sir,’ says he, ‘like those without hope.’
  • To feel grief over; to mourn, regret.
  • *, II.12:
    • It is impossible to make a man naturally blind, to conceive that he seeth not; impossible to make him desire to see, and sorrow his defect.

    References

    * *