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DISMAL
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Causing dejection
Example:
grim rainy weather
Synonyms:
blue; dark; dingy; disconsolate; dismal; drab; drear; dreary; gloomy; grim; sorry
Classified under:
Similar:
cheerless; depressing; uncheerful (causing sad feelings of gloom and inadequacy)
Context examples:
Morning, dismal and wet, at length dawned and discovered to my sleepless and aching eyes the church of Ingolstadt, its white steeple and clock, which indicated the sixth hour.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
As designed at first, no dwelling had been allotted to the lord of the castle and his family but the dark and dismal basement story of the keep.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Prognosis is usually dismal.
(Collagenous Sprue, NCI Thesaurus)
When anything had to be done, it was always the elder who was forced to do it; but if his father bade him fetch anything when it was late, or in the night-time, and the way led through the churchyard, or any other dismal place, he answered: Oh, no father, I’ll not go there, it makes me shudder! for he was afraid.
(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)
Going in dismal weather, to return probably in worse;—four horses and four servants taken out for nothing but to convey five idle, shivering creatures into colder rooms and worse company than they might have had at home.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
Superstition was with me at that moment; but it was not yet her hour for complete victory: my blood was still warm; the mood of the revolted slave was still bracing me with its bitter vigour; I had to stem a rapid rush of retrospective thought before I quailed to the dismal present.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
I never shall forget the waking, next morning; the being cheerful and fresh for the first moment, and then the being weighed down by the stale and dismal oppression of remembrance.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
Go out more, keep cheerful as well as busy, for you are the sunshine-maker of the family, and if you get dismal there is no fair weather.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
The dismal quarter of Soho seen under these changing glimpses, with its muddy ways, and slatternly passengers, and its lamps, which had never been extinguished or had been kindled afresh to combat this mournful reinvasion of darkness, seemed, in the lawyer’s eyes, like a district of some city in a nightmare.
(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
Grant himself went out with an umbrella, there was nothing to be done but to be very much ashamed, and to get into the house as fast as possible; and to poor Miss Crawford, who had just been contemplating the dismal rain in a very desponding state of mind, sighing over the ruin of all her plan of exercise for that morning, and of every chance of seeing a single creature beyond themselves for the next twenty-four hours, the sound of a little bustle at the front door, and the sight of Miss Price dripping with wet in the vestibule, was delightful.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
