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distress, as from want, anxiety, or grief; calamitous; woeful; very afflicting. "To what wretched state reserved!" Milton. O cruel! Death! to those you are more kind Than to the wretched mortals left behind. Waller. The wretched refuse of your teeming shore . . .

In a wretched manner; miserably; despicable.

The quality or state of being wretched; utter misery. Sir W. Raleigh.

Passion; violent emotion. [Obs.] Most wretched man, That to affections does the bridle lend. Spenser.

apostasy; faithless to moral allegiance; renegade. So spake the apostate angel. Milton. A wretched and apostate state. Steele.

To adopt a foreign or barbarous mode of speech. The ill habit . . . of wretched barbarizing against the Latin and Greek idiom, with their untutored Anglicisms. Milton.

Captive; wretched; unfortunate. [Obs.] Chaucer.

Suffering calamity; wretched; miserable. [Obs.] Ten thousands of calamitous persons. South.

To attend; to accompany. [Obs.] Thou, wretched boy, that didst consort him here, Shalt with him hence. Shak.

To share. [Obs.] For, of all miserias, I hold that chief Wretched to be, when none coparts our grief. Webster (1661).

coshering, that is to say, by quartering himself on the old tentants of his family, who, wretched as was their own condition, could not refuse a portion of their pittance to one whom they still regarded as their rightful lord. Macaulay.

to disgrace; as, vice degrades a man. O miserable mankind, to what fall Degraded, to what wretched state reserved! Milton. He pride . . . struggled hard against this degrading passion. Macaulay.

A squalid place of resort; a wretched dwelling place; a haunt; as, a den of vice. "Those squalid dens, which are the reproach of great capitals." Addison.

being deplored or lamented; lamentable; causing grief; hence, sad; calamitous; grievous; wretched; as, life's evils are deplorable. Individual sufferers are in a much more deplorable conditious than any others. Burke.

displeases; cause of irritation or annoyance; offense; injury. Hast thou delight to see a wretched man Do outrage and displeasure to himself Shak.

Sorrow; wretchedness. [Obs.]

ab junkets eat. Milton. The island princes overbold Have eat our substance. Tennyson. His wretched estate is eaten up with mortgages. Thackeray.

Sorrowful; wretched; full of trouble. [Obs.] Chaucer.

Destitute; helpless; in pitiful plight; wretched; miserable; almost hopeless; desperate. For here forlorn and lost I tread. Goldsmith. The condition of the besieged in the mean time was forlorn in the extreme. Prescott. She cherished the forlorn hope that he was still living. Thomson. A forlorn hope Etym: [D. verloren…

Hateful; detestable; shameful; odious; wretched. "The foul with Sycorax." Shak. Who first seduced them to that foul revolt Milton.