Wicked vs Wretched - What's the difference?
wicked | wretched |
Evil or mischievous by nature.
* {{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham), title=(The China Governess)
, chapter=6 (slang) Excellent; awesome; masterful; deeply satisfying.
(slang, New England, British) Very, extremely.
People who are wicked.Oxford dictionary [http://www.oxfordadvancedlearnersdictionary.com/dictionary/wicked_2].
(wick)
Having a wick.
(British, dialect, chiefly, Yorkshire) Infested with maggots.
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
Worthless; paltry; very poor or mean; miserable.
* {{quote-book, year=1864, author=(Fyodor Dostoyevsky), title=Notes from Underground, chapter=1
*, chapter=17
, title= * , Episode 16
* {{quote-news, year=2011, date=April 11, author=Phil McNulty, work=BBC Sport
, title= (obsolete) Hatefully contemptible; despicable; wicked.
As adjectives the difference between wicked and wretched
is that wicked is evil or mischievous by nature while wretched is very miserable; sunk in, or accompanied by, deep affliction or distress, as from want, anxiety, or grief; calamitous; woeful; very afflicting.As an adverb wicked
is very, extremely.As a noun wicked
is people who are wicked..As a verb wicked
is past tense of wick.wicked
English
Etymology 1
1225-75 (etyl) wikked, wikke, an alteration of wicke, adjectival use of (etyl)Adjective
(en-adj)citation, passage=‘[…] I remember a lady coming to inspect St. Mary's Home where I was brought up and seeing us all in our lovely Elizabethan uniforms we were so proud of, and bursting into tears all over us because “it was wicked to dress us like charity children”. […]’.}}
Usage notes
* Nouns to which "wicked" is often applied: witch, person, man, woman, angel, deed, act, pleasure, delight, game, way, night, word.Synonyms
* (evil or mischievous) evil, immoral, malevolent, malicious, nefarious, twisted, villainous, See also * awesome, bad, cool, dope, excellent, far out, groovy, hot, rad, See alsoDerived terms
* wickedly * wickedness * wicked tongueAdverb
(-)- The band we went to see the other night was wicked loud!
Synonyms
* hella, helluv (primarily Northern California slang )Noun
Etymology 2
See (wick)Verb
(head)Adjective
(-)- a two-wicked lamp
wretched
English
(Webster 1913)Adjective
(en-adj)citation, passage=As for me, I felt wretched and helpless, in the darkness, surrounded with angry waves, whose noise deafened me.}}
citation, passage=My room is a wretched , horrid one in the outskirts of the town.}}
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.}}
- 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,.
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. }}