What is worse than ill-luck?

The rhetorical question presents misfortune as an especially harsh condition, inviting the listener to consider bad luck among life’s most difficult burdens. Its implied answer is that very little seems more painful or discouraging, though the tone may be serious lament or dry irony according to context.

It can express resignation when events repeatedly go wrong despite effort or good intentions. Rather than offering a practical remedy, it voices frustration and emphasizes how exposed people can feel to adverse circumstances; it need not claim that those circumstances are caused by fate rather than identifiable causes.

Use it rhetorically for a run of setbacks or an outcome that feels cruelly unfavorable. It suits reflective, lamenting, or lightly ironic remarks when misfortune has made an already difficult situation harder, without necessarily treating events as fated.