Word.ws English Dictionary

wretche

wretche is the obsolete spelling of wretch.

Meaning of wretch

Noun

wretch (plural wretches)

  1. An unhappy, unfortunate, or miserable person.
    • The poor wretch, who lay motionless a long time, just began to recover his senses as a stage-coach came by.1742, Henry Fielding, chapter 12, in Joseph Andrews, archived from the original on 05 Apr 2012
  2. An unpleasant, annoying, worthless, or despicable person.
    • Swear to me but, thou bold wretch! said she, swear to me, that Pamela Andrews is really and truly thy lawful wife, without sham, without deceit, without double-meaning; and I know what I have to say!1740, Samuel Richardson, chapter 71, in Pamela
  3. (archaic) An exile.

Forms of wretche

pluralwretches

Questions about wretche

What is wretche the obsolete spelling of?
Wretche is the obsolete spelling of wretch.

Words near wretche in the dictionary

  1. wrestlings
  2. Wrestlingworth
  3. Wrestlingworth and Cockayne Hatley
  4. wrests
  5. wretch
  6. wretche
  7. wretched
  8. wretcheder
  9. wretchedest
  10. wretchedly
  11. wretchedmost

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wretche (page history and authors); wretch (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “wretche.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/wretche. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.