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One who grovels; an abject wretch. [Written also groveller.]

Showing only part of the face; wretched looking; meager. Shak.

Exciting or deserving great dislike, aversion, or disgust; odious. Unhappy, wretched, hateful day! Shak.

To raise or force from the breast; to utter with effort; as, to heave a sigh. The wretched animal heaved forth such groans. Shak.

A wretch; a rascal. [Obs.] Chaucer.

A base, menial wretch. -- a.

with reference to what is bad. [R.] We all have, I fear, . . . not a little improved the wretched inheritance of our ancestors. Bp. Porteus.

; boisterous; stormy; rigorously cold, etc.; as, inclement weather. Cowper. The guard the wretched from the inclement sky. Pope. Teach us further by what means to shun The inclement seasons, rain, ice, hail, and snow! Milton.

The state or quality of being infelicitous; unhappiness; misery; wretchedness; misfortune; want of suitableness or appropriateness. I. Watts. Whatever is the ignorance and infelicity of the present state, we were made wise and happy. Glanvill.

Unfortunate. [Obs.] I, woeful wretch and infortuned wight. Chaucer.

tch. Lloyd's MS., British Museum. [Monmouth] then accosted John Ketch, the executioner, a wretch who had butchered many brave and noble victims, and whose name has, during a century and a half, been vulgarly given to all who have succeeded him in his odious office. Macaulay.

nthankful and to evil. Luke vi 35. O cruel Death, to those you take more kind Than to the wretched mortals left behind. Waller. A fellow feeling makes one wondrous kind. Garrick.

A sword or dagger. The coward conquest of a wretch's knife. Shak. Knife grass (Bot.) a tropical American sedge (Scleria latifolia), having leaves with a very sharp and hard edge, like a knife. -- War to the knife, mortal combat; a conflict carried to the last extremity.

i. e., cause to be made; let bring, i. e., cause to be brought. [Obs.] This irous, cursed wretch Let this knight's son anon before him fetch. Chaucer. He . . . thus let do slay hem all three. Chaucer. Anon he let two coffers make. Gower.

Hence, Satan. How wretched Is that poor man that hangs on princes' favors! . . . When he falls, he falls like Lucifer, Never to hope again. Shak.

One not restrained by Christian principles; an unscrupulous villain; a while wretch. Addison.

A wretched person; a person afflicted by any great misfortune. [Obs.] Spenser. The woeful words of a miser now despairing. Sir P. Sidney.

Very unhappy; wretched. What hopes delude thee, miserable man Dryden.

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

Great unhappiness; extreme pain of body or mind; wretchedness; distress; woe. Chaucer. Destruction and misery are in their ways. Rom. iii. 16.