miserable

adj

1. In a state of misery: very sad, ill, or poor.

   “Thanks to that penny he had just spent so recklessly [on a newspaper] he would pass a happy hour, taken, for once, out of his anxious, despondent, miserable self. It irritated him shrewdly to know that these moments of respite from carking care would not be shared with his poor wife, with careworn, troubled Ellen.”

   “With some of it on the south and more of it on the north of the great main thoroughfare that connects Aldgate and the East India Docks, St. Bede's at this period of its history was perhaps the poorest and most miserable parish in the East End of London.”

   “The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation, because occupation means pre-occupation”

2. Very bad (at something); unskilled, incompetent; hopeless.

   “He's good at some sports, like tennis, but he's just miserable at football.”

3. Of the weather, extremely unpleasant due to being cold, wet, overcast, etc.
4. Wretched; worthless; mean; contemptible.

   “a miserable sinner”

   “In a month's collecting at Wonosalem and Djapannan I accumulated ninety-eight species of birds, but a most miserable lot of insects.”

5. (obsolete)Causing unhappiness or misery.

   “For what's more miserable than discontent?”

6. (obsolete)Avaricious; niggardly; miserly.

   “the liberal-hearted man is by the opinion of the prodigal miserable, and by the judgment of the miserable lavish”

7. Negative minded, unpleasant to be around.

noun

1. A miserable person; a wretch.

   “Dona Carmen repaired to the balcony to chat and jest with, and at, these miserables, who stopped before the door to rest in their progress. All pretended poverty while literally groaning under the weight of their riches.”

   “The charge that those who played Jesus in these representations were treated badly by the plays' Jews and Romans left one commissioner cold: in his view, these miserables were beaten much less severely by the players than they were by their actual lords or curacas.”

2. (in-plural, informal, with-definite-article)A state of misery or melancholy.

   “By 3:00 P.M. both DeeDee and Sandra's pants were thoroughly soaked, and this unhappy circumstance gave DeeDee a bad case of the miserables.”