Miserable vs Scarce - What's the difference?
miserable | scarce |
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)
Uncommon, rare; difficult to find; insufficient to meet a demand.
* (John Locke)
* , chapter=3
, title= Scantily supplied (with); deficient (in); used with of .
* (John Milton)
Scarcely, only just.
* Milton
* 1854 , (Edgar Allen Poe), (The Raven):
* 1898 , , (Moonfleet) Chapter 4:
* 1931 , William Faulkner, Sanctuary , Vintage 1993, p. 122:
As adjectives the difference between miserable and scarce
is that miserable is destitute, impoverished while scarce is uncommon, rare; difficult to find; insufficient to meet a demand.As a noun miserable
is wretch, scoundrel.As an adverb scarce is
scarcely, only just.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 * miserabilistscarce
English
(wikipedia scarce)Adjective
(er)- You tell him silver is scarcer now in England, and therefore risen one fifth in value.
Mr. Pratt's Patients, passage=My hopes wa'n't disappointed. I never saw clams thicker than they was along them inshore flats. I filled my dreener in no time, and then it come to me that 'twouldn't be a bad idee to get a lot more, take 'em with me to Wellmouth, and peddle 'em out. Clams was fairly scarce over that side of the bay and ought to fetch a fair price.}}
- A region scarce of prey.
Adverb
(-)- With a scarce well-lighted flame.
- And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, That I scarce was sure that I heard you [...].
- Yet had I scarce set foot in the passage when I stopped, remembering how once already this same evening I had played the coward, and run home scared with my own fears.
- Upon the barred and slitted wall the splotched shadow of the heaven tree shuddered and pulsed monstrously in scarce any wind.