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Bleak vs Drear - What's the difference?

bleak | drear |

As adjectives the difference between bleak and drear

is that bleak is without color; pale; pallid while drear is dreary.

As nouns the difference between bleak and drear

is that bleak is a small European river fish (Alburnus alburnus), of the family Cyprinidae while drear is gloom; sadness.

bleak

English

Etymology 1

From (etyl) bleke (also bleche > English .

Adjective

(er)
  • Without color; pale; pallid.
  • * Foxe
    • When she came out she looked as pale and as bleak as one that were laid out dead.
  • Desolate and exposed; swept by cold winds.
  • * Wordsworth
    • Wastes too bleak to rear / The common growth of earth, the foodful ear.
  • * Longfellow
    • at daybreak, on the bleak sea beach
    A bleak and bare rock.
    They escaped across the bleak landscape.
    A bleak , crater-pocked moonscape.
    We hiked across open meadows and climbed bleak mountains.
  • Unhappy; cheerless; miserable; emotionally desolate.
    • Downtown Albany felt bleak that February after the divorce.
    A bleak future is in store for you.
    The news is bleak .
    The survey paints a bleak picture.

    Etymology 2

    Probably from (etyl) bleikja .

    Noun

    (en noun) (wikipedia bleak)
  • A small European river fish (Alburnus alburnus ), of the family Cyprinidae.
    • Synonyms
    * alburn * blay

    References

    Anagrams

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    drear

    English

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • (poetic) Dreary.
  • * 1794, , lines 1-2
    • Earth raised up her head
    From the darkness dread and drear ,
  • * 1874 ,
    • I spoke, perplexed by something in the signs
    Of desolation I had seen and heard
    In this drear pilgrimage to ruined shrines:
  • * 1922 , , XXVIII, lines 1-2
    • Now dreary dawns the eastern light,
    And fall of eve is drear ,

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (obsolete) Gloom; sadness.
  • *1596 , (Edmund Spenser), The Faerie Queene , VI.2:
  • *:She thankt him deare / Both for that newes he did to her impart, / And for the courteous care which he did beare / Both to her love and to her selfe in that sad dreare .

    • Anagrams

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