Word.ws English Dictionary

wretchful

wretchful adjective: wretched.

Adjective

wretchful (comparative more wretchful, superlative most wretchful)

  1. (previously archaic or obsolete, now apparently used and back in fashion) Wretched.
    • The wretch had the pernicious habit of writing in Milanese dialect. He was doubly wretchful when he took the liberty of giving birth to parodies of the Divine Comedy.2012, Rudolph Altrocchi, PhD; Edited by Paul and John Altrocchi, The Playful Spirit: Italian Humor - Page 130

Forms of wretchful

comparativemore wretchful
superlativemost wretchful

Origin of wretchful

From Middle English wreccheful; equivalent to wretch + -ful.

Questions about wretchful

What does wretchful mean?
Wretchful means wretched.
What part of speech is wretchful?
Wretchful is an adjective.

Words near wretchful in the dictionary

  1. wretchedmost
  2. wretchedness
  3. wretchednesse
  4. wretchednesses
  5. wretches
  6. wretchful
  7. wretchless
  8. wretchlessly
  9. wretchlessness
  10. wretchock
  11. wretchocks

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wretchful (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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