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BLEAK
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I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Offering little or no hope
Example:
took a dim view of things
Synonyms:
Classified under:
Similar:
hopeless (without hope because there seems to be no possibility of comfort or success)
Derivation:
bleakness (a bleak and desolate atmosphere)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Providing no shelter or sustenance
Example:
a stark landscape
Synonyms:
bare; barren; bleak; desolate; stark
Classified under:
Similar:
inhospitable (unfavorable to life or growth)
Derivation:
bleakness (a bleak and desolate atmosphere)
Sense 3
Meaning:
Unpleasantly cold and damp
Example:
bleak winds of the North Atlantic
Synonyms:
Classified under:
Adjectives
Similar:
cold (having a low or inadequate temperature or feeling a sensation of coldness or having been made cold by e.g. ice or refrigeration)
Derivation:
bleakness (a bleak and desolate atmosphere)
Context examples:
Draw your chair up and hand me my violin, for the only problem we have still to solve is how to while away these bleak autumnal evenings.
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Another hour or two's snow can hardly make the road impassable; and we are two carriages; if one is blown over in the bleak part of the common field there will be the other at hand.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
By contrast, those who generally allow such bleak feelings as sadness, disappointment and resentment to run their course reported fewer mood disorder symptoms than those who critique them or push them away, even after six months.
(Embracing Darker Moods Makes You Feel Better, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)
They were those which treat of the haunts of sea-fowl; of the solitary rocks and promontories by them only inhabited; of the coast of Norway, studded with isles from its southern extremity, the Lindeness, or Naze, to the North Cape—Nor could I pass unnoticed the suggestion of the bleak shores of Lapland, Siberia, Spitzbergen, Nova Zembla, Iceland, Greenland, with the vast sweep of the Arctic Zone, and those forlorn regions of dreary space,—that reservoir of frost and snow, where firm fields of ice, the accumulation of centuries of winters, glazed in Alpine heights above heights, surround the pole, and concentre the multiplied rigours of extreme cold.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
It was indeed a paradise compared to the bleak forest, my former residence, the rain-dropping branches, and dank earth.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
With the early dawn they found themselves in a black ravine, with others sloping away from it on either side, and the bare brown crags rising in long bleak terraces all round them.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
I leaned despairingly over the rail, watching the trim little schooner swiftly increasing the bleak sweep of ocean between us.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
After that, grateful and content, White Fang lay at Grey Beaver's feet, gazing at the fire that warmed him, blinking and dozing, secure in the knowledge that the morrow would find him, not wandering forlorn through bleak forest-stretches, but in the camp of the man-animals, with the gods to whom he had given himself and upon whom he was now dependent.
(White Fang, by Jack London)
With these expressions, Mr. Micawber placed Mrs. Micawber in a chair, and embraced the family all round; welcoming a variety of bleak prospects, which appeared, to the best of my judgement, to be anything but welcome to them; and calling upon them to come out into Canterbury and sing a chorus, as nothing else was left for their support.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
He made it clear to Buck that he was to come, and they ran side by side through the sombre twilight, straight up the creek bed, into the gorge from which it issued, and across the bleak divide where it took its rise.
(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)
