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Bleak vs Wretched - What's the difference?

bleak | wretched | Related terms |

Bleak is a related term of wretched.


As adjectives the difference between bleak and wretched

is that bleak is without color; pale; pallid while wretched is very miserable; sunk in, or accompanied by, deep affliction or distress, as from want, anxiety, or grief; calamitous; woeful; very afflicting.

As a noun bleak

is a small european river fish (alburnus alburnus ), of the family cyprinidae.

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

    * *

    wretched

    English

    (Webster 1913)

    Adjective

    (en-adj)
  • Very miserable; sunk in, or accompanied by, deep affliction or distress, as from want, anxiety, or grief; calamitous; woeful; very afflicting.
  • * {{quote-book, year=1918, author=(w)
    • , title=Creatures That Once Were Men, and other stories, chapter=4 citation , passage=As for me, I felt wretched and helpless, in the darkness, surrounded with angry waves, whose noise deafened me.}}
  • Worthless; paltry; very poor or mean; miserable.
  • * {{quote-book, year=1864, author=(Fyodor Dostoyevsky), title=Notes from Underground, chapter=1
    • citation , passage=My room is a wretched , horrid one in the outskirts of the town.}}
  • *, chapter=17
    • , title= The Mirror and the Lamp , passage=This time was most dreadful for Lilian. Thrown on her own resources and almost penniless, she maintained herself and paid the rent of a wretched room near the hospital by working as a charwoman, sempstress, anything.}}
  • * , Episode 16
    • All those wretched quarrels, in his humble opinion, stirring up bad blood, from some bump of combativeness or gland of some kind, erroneously supposed to be about a punctilio of honour and a flag,.
  • * {{quote-news, year=2011, date=April 11, author=Phil McNulty, work=BBC Sport
    • , title= Liverpool 3-0 Man City , passage=Mario Balotelli replaced Tevez but his contribution was so negligible that he suffered the indignity of being substituted himself as time ran out, a development that encapsulated a wretched 90 minutes for City and boss Roberto Mancini. }}
  • (obsolete) Hatefully contemptible; despicable; wicked.

    • Usage notes

    * Nouns to which "wretched" is often applied: woman, state, life, condition, creature, man, excess, person, place, world, being, situation, weather, slave, animal, city, village, health, house, town.

    Quotations

    * To what wretched state reserved! Milton * Wretched ungratefulness . Sir Philip Sidney * Wrechet World King Lear

    Synonyms

    * See also

    Derived terms

    * wretchedness

    Related terms

    * wretch

    External links

    * *