miser

Miser, misera, miserum. First and second declension, but with the kind of -er nominative that keeps its e all the way through: miser, miseri, miserum, unlike sacer, which drops to sacri.

It is stronger than English "miserable". Miser means pitiable, in a condition that deserves pity, and it is used of the dead, the exiled and the ruined as much as of the merely unhappy. The neuter miserum est works as an exclamation, "what a wretched business". Watch the forms: the adverb is misere, while miseri is the genitive singular and the masculine nominative plural at once. The family gives misery, commiserate, the liturgical Miserere, and English miser, which narrowed the sense down to one particular kind of wretch.