7 uses
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Definition
very bad
in various senses, including:
- unfortunate or miserable — as in "wretched prisoners sleeping on the cold floor"
- of poor quality — as in "wretched roads"
- morally bad — as in "The wretched woman stole his wallet."
- He succeeded Pierce and the Treasury officials, and sold forfeited estates, leased abandoned plantations, encouraged schools, and received from Sherman, after that terribly picturesque march to the sea, thousands of the wretched camp followers.Chapter 2 (18% in)
- Day after day the songs of the callous, the wail of the motherless, and the muttered curses of the wretched echoed from the Flint to the Chickasawhatchee, until by 1860 there had risen in West Dougherty perhaps the richest slave kingdom the modern world ever knew.Chapter 7 (53% in)
- There are four chief causes of these wretched homes: First, long custom born of slavery has assigned such homes to Negroes; white laborers would be offered better accommodations, and might, for that and similar reasons, give better work.Chapter 8 (18% in)
- He shows his Northern visitor the scarred and wretched land; the ruined mansions, the worn-out soil and mortgaged acres, and says, This is Negro freedom!Chapter 8 (74% in)
- "Wherever the country is poor," cried Arthur Young, "it is in the hands of metayers," and "their condition is more wretched than that of day-laborers."Chapter 8 (85% in)
- But among the black laborers all this is aggravated, first, by a race prejudice which varies from a doubt and distrust among the best element of whites to a frenzied hatred among the worst; and, secondly, it is aggravated, as I have said before, by the wretched economic heritage of the freedmen from slavery.Chapter 9 (27% in)
- The wretched of my race that line the alleys of the nation sit fatherless and unmothered; but Love sat beside his cradle, and in his ear Wisdom waited to speak.Chapter 11 (97% in)
There are no more uses of "wretched" in The Souls of Black Folk.
Typical Usage
(best examples)