wretched Adjective
( en-adj)
Very miserable; sunk in, or accompanied by, deep affliction or distress, as from want, anxiety, or grief; calamitous; woeful; very afflicting.
* {{quote-book, year=1918, author=(w)
, title=Creatures That Once Were Men, and other stories, chapter=4
citation
, passage=As for me, I felt wretched and helpless, in the darkness, surrounded with angry waves, whose noise deafened me.}}
Worthless; paltry; very poor or mean; miserable.
* {{quote-book, year=1864, author=(Fyodor Dostoyevsky), title=Notes from Underground, chapter=1
citation
, passage=My room is a wretched , horrid one in the outskirts of the town.}}
*, chapter=17
, title= The Mirror and the Lamp
, passage=This time was most dreadful for Lilian. Thrown on her own resources and almost penniless, she maintained herself and paid the rent of a wretched room near the hospital by working as a charwoman, sempstress, anything.}}
* , Episode 16
- All those wretched quarrels, in his humble opinion, stirring up bad blood, from some bump of combativeness or gland of some kind, erroneously supposed to be about a punctilio of honour and a flag,.
* {{quote-news, year=2011, date=April 11, author=Phil McNulty, work=BBC Sport
, title= Liverpool 3-0 Man City
, passage=Mario Balotelli replaced Tevez but his contribution was so negligible that he suffered the indignity of being substituted himself as time ran out, a development that encapsulated a wretched 90 minutes for City and boss Roberto Mancini. }}
-
(obsolete) Hatefully contemptible; despicable; wicked.
Usage notes
* Nouns to which "wretched" is often applied: woman, state, life, condition, creature, man, excess, person, place, world, being, situation, weather, slave, animal, city, village, health, house, town.
Quotations
* To what wretched state reserved! Milton
* Wretched ungratefulness . Sir Philip Sidney
* Wrechet World King Lear
Synonyms
* See also
Derived terms
* wretchedness
Related terms
* wretch
External links
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shabby English
Adjective
( er)
Torn or worn; poor; mean; ragged.
* {{quote-book, year=1905, author=
, title=
, chapter=2 citation
, passage=Miss Phyllis Morgan, as the hapless heroine dressed in the shabbiest of clothes, appears in the midst of a gay and giddy throng; she apostrophises all and sundry there, including the villain, and has a magnificent scene which always brings down the house, and nightly adds to her histrionic laurels.}}
- They lived in a tiny apartment, with some old, shabby furniture.
Clothed with ragged, much worn, or soiled garments.
- The fellow arrived looking rather shabby after journeying so far.
Mean; paltry; despicable.
- shabby treatment
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