WRETCHED • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Wretched

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/rˈɛtʃɪd/ Listen

adjective

Wretched adj.

Very miserable; sunk in, or accompanied by, deep affliction or distress, as from want, anxiety, or grief; calamitous; woeful; very afflicting. "To what wretched state reserved!" "O cruel! Death! to those you are more kind Than to the wretched mortals left behind."

Worthless; paltry; very poor or mean; miserable; as, a wretched poem; a wretched cabin.

Hatefully contemptible; despicable; wicked. (Obs.) "Wretched ungratefulness." "Nero reigned after this Claudius, of all men wretchedest, ready to all manner (of) vices."

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Etymology of 'Wretched'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Wretched" Quotes from Famous Books

... her admiringly, conscious of her imperious mood. What was to become of her? Would she marry well? Would she marry in time? Thus far no breath of the wretched days in Louisville had affected Berenice. Most of those with whom Mrs. Carter had found herself compelled to deal would be kind enough to keep her secret. But there were others. How near she had been to drifting on the rocks when ...

— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... imagination can ever do justice to the features of Sir Beranger, when, three leagues from the city, the right reverend prelate and his apostolic brethren threw off the mask with peals of un-canonical laughter, led the wretched cit off to Lourdes through crooked by-roads, and there extracted from his disconsolate relatives five thousand francs of ransom,—which they, holy men, doubtless devoted to the purposes of their order. There is a story for a rhymer Sherwood ...

— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix

... heavy weather. Indeed, the peril was even greater, inasmuch as the savages on comparatively fine days ventured forth on their marauding excursions, and in boisterous weather disappeared from sight, their wretched canoes being frail and undeserving the name of craft at all. This being so, I now enjoyed gales of wind as never before, and the Spray was never long without them during her struggles about Cape Horn. I became in ...

— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum

... The past's our own: No fiend can take that from us! Ah, poor boy! Had I, like thee, been bred from my black birth-hour In filth and shame, counting the soulless months Only by some fresh ulcer! I'll be patient— Here's something yet more wretched than myself. Sleep thou on still, poor charge—though I'll not grudge One moment of my sickening toil about thee, Best counsellor—dumb preacher, who dost warn me How much I have enjoyed, how much ...

— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley

... to his side, and rolled his eyes agonizingly towards his mother, but she took no notice. She got some paper out of the cupboard, and Ephraim sat down and began quirling it into long spirals with a wretched sulky air. ...

— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

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