Miserable is unhappy all the way through, not a bit down. Sitting on the end of the bed in a wet coat with nowhere to go. A child who has lost a toy and cannot be talked round, however many sweets you offer.
Miserable also describes the thing that causes the feeling: miserable weather, a miserable little flat with one window over a bin store, a miserable Tuesday in February. Call a person miserable in Britain and you may mean grumpy rather than sad — a miserable old man complains about everything and enjoys it. It stretches to mean insultingly small as well: a miserable pay rise, a miserable three points all season. Make someone's life miserable is the fixed phrase for steady petty cruelty. The noun is misery, the adverb miserably, and in British English a misery is also a person who moans: don't be such a misery.
1adjectivemiserableVery unhappy and uncomfortable.~24%
“She was miserable for weeks after the move.”
synonyms: wretched, unhappy
2adjectivedismalMaking people unhappy; thoroughly unpleasant.~72%
“It was a miserable November day, grey from dawn to dusk.”
3adjectivegrumpyBad-tempered and always complaining.~2%
“The miserable man in the flat below complains about our footsteps.”
4adjectiveinsultinglyInsultingly small in amount.~2%
“They offered a miserable ten pounds for the whole box.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 8 sentences found in the wild and placed 8 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Miserable came through Middle French from Latin miserabilis, which is miser with the ending -able bolted on, the same -able as in readable and lovable. So the word began as something close to pity-able: not simply unhappy, but unhappy in a way that pulls pity out of anyone watching. English later handed it to the weather, the flat and the salary as well as the person.
Latin
miserabilis
Middle French
miserable
English, today
miserable
Middle French miserable, from Old French -, from Latin miserabilis, equivalent to miser + able.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA