miserably

adverbB2+Common in everyday speech and writing · #8,082 of 15,258neutral

Miserably means in a very unhappy way, or utterly and completely. Sat there miserably, failed miserably, miserably cold.

The second sense is the commoner and has nothing to do with unhappiness: failed miserably means failed completely. It goes with fail above all, which is why the phrase sounds fixed. Miserably cold means unpleasantly rather than sadly.

Definitions of miserably

1adverbmiserablyIn a very unhappy way, or utterly and completely.B2+
“The children sat miserably in the car as the rain poured down on their beach holiday.”

miserably is a manner.

Where it comes from

Miserable plus -ly, from Latin miserabilis, pitiable, from miser, wretched.

Middle English
myserablie
English, today
miserably

From Middle English myserablie; equivalent to miserable + -ly.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

miserably in the wild

Judy was treated warmly, but Punch was miserably abused and driven to a point of murderous and suicidal desperation.
Baa Baa, Black Sheep (short story)
When Awe, the arrogant monkey, climbed up to the heavens to try to show Mawu that he too could give life, he failed miserably.
Mawu
The party, which was constitutionally multi-ethnic, sought to create a niche for itself as a third force in the late fifties and early sixties but it failed miserably.
Parti Negara
Liverpool failed miserably to defend their WSL title and Ryland was among four players to be released by the club at the end of the 2015 season.
Ingrid Ryland
However, it flopped miserably, only making it to #34 on the Billboard country singles chart.
Old King Kong

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

From Project Gutenberg, public domain. These sentences are from real books, shown to illustrate the word at work.

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