misery
Americannoun
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miseries
plural
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wretchedness of condition or circumstances.
- Synonyms:
- trial, tribulation, suffering
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distress or suffering caused by need, privation, or poverty.
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great mental or emotional distress; extreme unhappiness.
- Synonyms:
- desolation, torment, woe, anguish, grief
- Antonyms:
- happiness
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a cause or source of distress.
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Older Use.
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a pain.
a misery in my left side.
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Often miseries. a case or period of despondency or gloom.
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noun
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intense unhappiness, discomfort, or suffering; wretchedness
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a cause of such unhappiness, discomfort, etc
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squalid or poverty-stricken conditions
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informal a person who is habitually depressed
he is such a misery
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dialect a pain or ailment
Synonym Usage
See sorrow.
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of misery
First recorded in 1325–75; Middle English miserie, from Latin miseria, equivalent to miser “wretched” + -ia -y 3
Explanation
Misery is a state of deep unhappiness or discomfort. It's not dropping your ice cream cone. It's having a hairy monster steal your ice cream cone, eat it in one bite, and then kidnap you and carry you off to his cave. Misery describes a miserable situation and a miserable feeling. Waiting four hours in the hot sun for a concert you don't want to see and can't afford? That's misery. The only way to survive is to bring a friend who hates the band as much as you––because misery loves company.
Vocabulary lists containing misery
Inside Out & Back Again
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"The People Could Fly," Vocabulary from the folk tale
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Beowulf vocabulary
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
If MLK hospital closed, he said, “it would be devastating, and we would have untold misery from lack of access to care.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 3, 2026
Stylish in his misery, he is impeccably clad in a black suit and looks like a cross between Marcello Mastroianni in “8 1/2” and John Travolta in “Pulp Fiction.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 16, 2026
In a statement on Sunday, the Editors Guild of India said Rajagopal's case "highlights the misery that millions of Indians are being put through" because of the SIR exercise.
From BBC ● Jun. 29, 2026
"She's dead," he said hours later, misery etched into his face.
From Barron's ● Jun. 27, 2026
He watched Io’s misery, turned into a beast, driven from her home; he dared not come to her help.
From "Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes" by Edith Hamilton
No wonder mud became “shorthand for the miseries of poverty,” Ms. Ziegelman writes.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 16, 2026
The manuscript that shared her story with the world quoted her as promising to “hear all their cries ... and remedy all their miseries, sorrows, and pains.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 11, 2025
Mr Maneshinde said Chakraborty went through "untold miseries" and was jailed "for no fault of hers".
From BBC ● Mar. 25, 2025
“You cannot blame British newspapers for the miseries heaped on the Prince and Princess of Wales,” columnist Hugo Rifkind wrote in The Times of London.
From Seattle Times ● Mar. 26, 2024
I was staring at my mother’s private miseries, and it made me want to go outside and bury the book in the dirt.
From "The Secret Life of Bees" by Sue Monk Kidd
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
