WRETCH • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Wretch

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noun

Wretch n.

A miserable person; one profoundly unhappy. "The wretch that lies in woe." "Hovered thy spirit o'er thy sorrowing son, Wretch even then, life's journey just begun?"

One sunk in vice or degradation; a base, despicable person; a vile knave; as, a profligate wretch. Note: Wretch is sometimes used by way of slight or ironical pity or contempt, and sometimes to express tenderness; as we say, poor thing. "Poor wretch was never frighted so."

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Etymology of 'Wretch'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Wretch" Quotes from Famous Books

... give their life for Christ. Ah me, God, sweet Love! Raise swiftly, "Babbo," the gonfalon of the most holy Cross, and you will see the wolves become lambs. Peace, peace, peace, that war may not delay this happy time! But if you will wreak vengeance and justice, take them upon me, poor wretch, and give me any pain and torment that may please you, even to death. I believe that through the stench of my iniquities many evils have happened, and many misfortunes and discords. On me, then, your poor daughter, take any vengeance that you will. Ah me, father, I die of grief and ...

— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa

... bill was passed, did not relish the levying of a heavy tax on the whiskey that was to fill them. The exciseman was to their view precisely what Dr. Johnson had defined him in his dictionary: "an odious wretch, employed to collect an unjust tax." Revolutionary proceedings had been inaugurated by resistance to a tax on tea. But tea at that day was looked upon as a luxury in which only a few could indulge, while whiskey was regarded as a necessity, of universal consumption. Resistance went ...

— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... heart of the writhing wretch knew its own bitterness, only those tear-blinded eyes saw the pitiful panorama of a penurious Jew's struggle for Culture. For, nursed in a narrow creed, he had dreamt the dream of Knowledge. To know—to know—was the passion that consumed ...

— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... thereabouts with a harsh, unpleasant countenance ordered a stone for the grave of his bitter enemy, with whom he had waged warfare half a lifetime, to their mutual misery and ruin. The secret of this phenomenon was that hatred had become the sustenance and enjoyment of the poor wretch's soul; it had supplied the place of all kindly affections; it had been really a bond of sympathy between himself and the man who shared the passion; and when its object died, the unappeasable foe was the only mourner for the dead. He expressed a purpose of being ...

— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... his mother had described it accurately to him. An olive-tree stood inside the wall near the entrance. Benedetto took between his teeth the knife Anselmo had given him, and swung himself over the wall and thence on to the window-sill. The wretch hesitated a moment before he broke the pane. Suppose his mother uttered ...

— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere

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