Search the Dictionary

Miserable; pitiful; paltry; -- in a contemptuous or Bp. Stillingfleet. -- Lam"en*ta*ble*ness, n. -- Lam"en*ta*bly, adv.

In a miserable; unhappily; calamitously; wretchedly; meanly. They were miserably entertained. Sir P. Sidney. The fifth was miserably stabbed to death. South.

An object of superstitious homage and fear. Carlyle. The miserable Mumbo Jumbo they paraded. Dickens.

Denoting passage from one state to another; from. [Obs.] "O miserable of happy." Milton.

d States of America, whether they will be respectable and prosperous, or contemptible and miserable, as a nation. Washington.

Petty; insignificant. "The miserable remains of a peddling commerce." Burke.

Fitted to excite pity or sympathy; wretched; miserable; lamentable; sad; as, a piteous case. Spenser. The most piteous tale of Lear. Shak.

Deserving pity; wworthy of, or exciting, compassion; miserable; lamentable; piteous; as, pitiable persons; a pitiable condition; pitiable wretchedness.

To be pitied for littleness or meanness; miserable; paltry; contemptible; despicable. That's villainous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Shak.

d by precaution. They [ancient philosophers] treasured up their supposed discoveries with miserable precaution. J. H. Newman.

eyes to see down from heaven; they be purblindand sand-blind. Latimer. O purblind race of miserable men. Tennyson. -- Pur"blind`ly, adv. -- Pur"blind`ness, n.

bject to torture; to torment. A fit of the stone puts a kingto the rack, and makes him as miserable as it does the meanest subject. Sir W. Temple.

landlords, by unmeasureable screwing and racking their tenants, have already reduced the miserable people to a worse condition than the peasants in France. swift.

t; unwillingness, doubt, or hesitation proceeding from motives of conscience. He was made miserable by the conflict between his tastes and his scruples. Macaulay. To make scruple, to hesitate from conscientious motives; to scruple. Locke.

Old and worn out; exhausted; spiritless; also, poor and miserable looking; shabily clothed; shabby looking; as, he looked seedy coat. [Colloq.] Little Flanigan here . . . is a little seedy, as we say among us that practice the law. Goldsmith. Seedy toe, an affection of a horse's foot, in which a cavity filled with horn…

fect not little shifts and subterfuges, to avoid the force of an argument. I. Watts. By a miserable subterfuge, they hope to render this position safe by rendering it nugatory. Burke.

A room where liquors are kept on tap; a barroom. The ambassador was put one night into a miserable taproom, full of soldiers smoking. Macaulay.

his deformed crimes. Spenser. Like the toad, ugly and venomous. Shak. O, I have passed a miserable night, So full of ugly sights, of ghastly dreams. Shak.

In a degree miserable or wretched; not happy; sad; sorrowful; as, children render their parents unhappy by misconduct.

nsettled. That beauteous Emma vagrant courses took. Prior. While leading this vagrant and miserable life, Johnson fell in live. Macaulay.