wretched

From Middle English wrecched, equivalent to wretch +‎ -ed.

• IPA^(key): /ˈɹɛtʃɪd/

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wretched (comparative wretcheder or more wretched, superlative wretchedest or most wretched)

1. Very miserable; feeling deep affliction or distress.
   • 1918, Maksim Gorky, chapter 4, in Creatures That Once Were Men, and other stories‎:

     As for me, I felt wretched and helpless, in the darkness, surrounded with angry waves, whose noise deafened me.

2. Worthless; paltry; very poor or mean; miserable.
   • 1864, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, chapter 1, in Notes from Underground‎:

     My room is a wretched, horrid one in the outskirts of the town.

   • 1918, W. B. Maxwell, chapter 17, in The Mirror and the Lamp:

     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.

   • 1922 February, James Joyce, “[Episode 16]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare & Co.; Sylvia Beach, OCLC 560090630; republished London: Published for the Egoist Press, London by John Rodker, Paris, October 1922, OCLC 2297483:

     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, […].

   • 2011 April 11, Phil McNulty, “Liverpool 3-0 Man City”, in BBC Sport:

     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.

3. (obsolete) Hatefully contemptible; despicable; wicked.

• Nouns to which "wretched" is often applied: woman, state, life, condition, creature, man, excess, person, place, world, being, situation, weather, slave, animal, city, village, health, house, town.

• (very miserable): See Thesaurus:sad or Thesaurus:lamentable
• (worthless): See Thesaurus:insignificant
• (hatefully contemptible): See Thesaurus:despicable

• wretched in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• wretched in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• “wretched” in Douglas Harper, Online Etymology Dictionary, 2001–2019.

• IPA^(key): /ɹɛtʃt/
• Rhymes: -ɛtʃt

wretched

1. Misspelling of retched.