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:
Matheus Cunha's deflected last-minute equaliser spared Manchester United more misery after Lisandro Martinez's own goal had threatened to give Fulham victory at Craven Cottage.
From BBC ● Sep. 20, 2026
Their misery is only going to get worse.
From Salon ● Sep. 9, 2026
UK travellers faced more misery on Wednesday with more than 150 flights scrapped across the country, as Britain's air traffic control service scrambled to recover from a technical glitch that sparked chaos.
From Barron's ● Sep. 9, 2026
‘We would have untold misery from lack of access to care.’
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 5, 2026
I had never before witnessed human misery on such a scale.
From "An Elephant in the Garden" by Michael Morpurgo
But it also quite consciously plays to the baser side of us that takes cold comfort, even joy, at the miseries of the hyperwealthy.
From Salon ● Mar. 14, 2026
No wonder mud became “shorthand for the miseries of poverty,” Ms. Ziegelman writes.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 16, 2026
Perhaps most painful among the nurses’ many miseries is their isolation: the secrets they keep in hopes of sparing their loved ones an iota of extra suffering.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 24, 2025
Mr Maneshinde said Chakraborty went through "untold miseries" and was jailed "for no fault of hers".
From BBC ● Mar. 25, 2025
The French he had met were generous, or otherwise lost to their own miseries.
From "Atonement" by Ian McEwan
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
