Meaning & use

wretched

adjective·Advanced

Extremely unhappy, unfortunate, or in a very poor and miserable condition.

See it in a sentence

The refugees lived in wretched conditions with little food or clean water.

He felt wretched after realizing he had forgotten his best friend's birthday.

A note on using this word

Wretched can describe both a person's emotional state and the poor condition of a place or situation.

Words with a similar meaning

Choose a synonym to suit the sentence. Meanings can overlap without being identical.

Words with an opposite meaning

fortunatecomfortable

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