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)

Adjective

(en-adj)

Dreadful; causing alarm and fear.

Formidable, powerful.

* 1883: (Robert Louis Stevenson), (Treasure Island)

and there was even a party of the younger men who pretended to admire him, calling him a "true sea-dog," and "real old salt," and such-like names, and saying there was the sort of man that made England terrible at sea.

Intense; extreme in degree or extent.

* {{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham), title=(The China Governess)

, chapter=18 citation , passage=‘Then the father has a great fight with his terrible conscience,’ said Munday with granite seriousness. ‘Should he make a row with the police […]? Or should he say nothing about it and condone brutality for fear of appearing in the newspapers?}}

Unpleasant; disagreeable.

* , chapter=12

, title= The Mirror and the Lamp , passage=To Edward […] he was terrible , nerve-inflaming, poisonously asphyxiating. He sat rocking himself in the late Mr. Churchill's swing chair, smoking and twaddling.}}

Very bad; lousy.

* {{quote-news, year=2012, date=April 26, author=Tasha Robinson, work=The Onion AV Club

, title= Film: Reviews: The Pirates! Band Of Misfits , passage=The openly ridiculous plot has The Pirate Captain (Hugh Grant) scheming to win the Pirate Of The Year competition, even though he’s a terrible pirate, far outclassed by rivals voiced by Jeremy Piven and Salma Hayek.}}