Q: The saying 'misery loves company'?

Question

My friend used to say "misery loves company" in responce to wretches messing with their fellow man to give them grief. She used this phrase wrong didn't she? Maybe I can use this in a letter? Let me go check if it's in wikipedia.

Usenet · Accepted Answer

[nq:1]My friend used to say "misery loves company" in responce to wretches messing with their fellow man to give them grief. She used this phrase wrong didn't she? Maybe I can use this in a letter? Let me go check if it's in wikipedia.[/nq]
It doesn't sound like your friend is too far off. It means that people who are miserable tend to make those around them miserable, or at least unhappy.

Tony Cooper
Orlando, FL

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]My friend used to say "misery loves company" in responce ... a letter? Let me go check if it's in wikipedia.[/nq]
[nq:1]It doesn't sound like your friend is too far off. It means that people who are miserable tend to make those around them miserable, or at least unhappy.[/nq]
I'd slant it slightly differently - not that miserable peeps tend* to (although they often do) but that they *want to make others miserable.
John Dean
Oxford

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]My friend used to say "misery loves company" in responce to wretches messing with their fellow man to give them grief.[/nq]
You'll have to be more clear what you mean by "messing" and "give them grief".
[nq:1]She used this phrase wrong didn't she? Maybe I can use this in a letter? Let me go check if it's in wikipedia.[/nq]
I generally think the phrase means having someone there to cry on his shoulder. Or even going to a bar with the hope the bartender or someone will listen.
If you mean shooting some strangers or bombing some building because the first person is miserable and he wants others to be miserable too, that might well happen but I don't think it is within the meaning of the title phrase.
If you are inclined to email me
for some reason, remove NOPSAM :-)

Usenet · Answer

No, not at all. The saying applies to people who want others around to also be miserable, and will say things that make them miserable. The bartender is not miserable. He may commiserate, but he is not miserable just because he commiserates.

Tony Cooper
Orlando, FL

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]My friend used to say "misery loves company" in responce to wretches messing with their fellow man to give them grief. She used this phrase wrong didn't she? Maybe I can use this in a letter? Let me go check if it's in wikipedia.[/nq]
I've assumed this to be a sort of backwards inference, since it's most commonly directed at strangers who are behaving badly.

"You appear to be intentionally trying to make other people miserable; the obvious explanation for this antisocial behavior is that you are miserable yourself and would be more comfortable making other people be more like you."
r

Usenet · Answer

I don't remember the examples I gave my friend. A few years ago, I mentioned to her that former co-workers who had bad jobs antagonized me and other co-workers of mine with words, expressions, body languages and were in bad moods and she said "They're not happy to be there." Plus two other times when I complained to her she used the phrase misery loves company . There was one particular co-worker who was the biggest open book of them all for being wretched.

She was in her 40's or like 50 (give or take) and dirt poor her whole life and lived in a ghetto and a newly arrived immigrant from a fourth world country of the lowest order. She'd scream at us, taunt us and make fun of us while repeatedly shaking her head from side to side hostily or smile joyfully when doing it in the knowledge that she was making us indignent and furious at her and to show us she was, and when she wwas talking to us about work-related things, she'd still use slight voices, expressions, body languages to show us that she's being hostile and rude to get our goats.This was to (1) punish us for her lifelong pauperism and because she knew she was a deadender because she was born destitute and won't inherit money and won't make her own money because she got no skills and is uneducated because her parents couldn't afford to send her to college (and maybe because she had to work for a living as a child and didn't have much time for schooling?) and she wanted a business career and to be rich and was deluding herself that she achieved these things and her job was an ugly reminder to her of what life had to offer and she worked two or three jobs a week, and two a day for what was definetely five days a week, but more likely six or seven and when she was where I worked, she'd not be enthusiastic because she foreknew she was gonna hafta get her worthless carcass to some other ballbusting menial labor job when she gets off work, or had just come from a full like 8-hour shift and had like eight more hours to go till she gets off work and will be back to work at some other jobs that sucks like **** in the morning and she didn't get much sleep
and (2) to take out the foul moods she was in on whomever was near her.She was raging and to the point where she was screaming, yet nobody bothered her. She was alone with her thoughts. She'd used to work herself up into her own retarded lather. I once saw her standing there fuming and I was thinking "What's your problem?" Then she turned to Alton and shoved a shirt in his chest rather hard and yelled "Put this away!" and frowned! The frown was so fake like when Mr. T pushed a fan out of his way when he was playing a heavy in Rocky 3.

She was showing him that she was making him indignant and making his blood boil! He screamed out "(b)itch!" then grabbed the shirt outa her hand and stormed off taking long infuriated appalled disgusted upset strides. He later complained about her at least two times. I'm trying to find out where she lives, so I can put a hurting on her. She's not in the White Pages.
Weeks later, I saw him talking to her about her life and I could sense the distaste. Someone told me that he doesn't like her. He said of the straw bosses, "some of them think they're hot stuff!" She was a supervisor. That's as "lower management as super-humanly possible. There was an assistant manager who was above her and the department manager who was above him in the men's department where we worked.

She might me dead by now. She's the type to get cancer because she had no luck in life.

Q: The saying 'misery loves company'?

Top answer

Get the Weekly English Kit 📬

Related Questions