Dismal vs Gloom - What's the difference?
dismal | gloom |
Disappointingly inadequate.
* {{quote-news, year=2012, date=April 22, author=Sam Sheringham, work=BBC Sport
, title= Gloomy and bleak.
Depressing.
*, chapter=12
, title= Darkness, dimness or obscurity.
* 1898 , , (Moonfleet) Chapter 4
A melancholy, depressing or despondent atmosphere.
Cloudiness or heaviness of mind; melancholy; aspect of sorrow; low spirits; dullness.
* Burke
A drying oven used in gunpowder manufacture.
To be dark or gloomy.
* Goldsmith
* 1891 , Mary Noailles Murfree, In the "Stranger People's" Country , Nebraska 2005, p. 189:
to look or feel sad, sullen or despondent.
* D. H. Lawrence
To render gloomy or dark; to obscure; to darken.
* Walpole
* Tennyson
To fill with gloom; to make sad, dismal, or sullen.
* Tennyson
* Goldsmith
To shine or appear obscurely or imperfectly; to glimmer.
As an adjective dismal
is disappointingly inadequate.As a noun gloom is
darkness, dimness or obscurity.As a verb gloom is
to be dark or gloomy.dismal
English
Adjective
(en adjective)Liverpool 0-1 West Brom, passage=Liverpool's efforts thereafter had an air of desperation as their dismal 2012 league form continued.}}
Mr. Pratt's Patients, passage=So, after a spell, he decided to make the best of it and shoved us into the front parlor. 'Twas a dismal sort of place, with hair wreaths, and wax fruit, and tin lambrekins, and land knows what all. It looked like a tomb and smelt pretty nigh as musty and dead-and-gone.}}
Usage notes
* Nouns to which "dismal" is often applied: failure, performance, state, record, place, result, scene, season, year, economy, future, fate, weather, news, condition, history.Synonyms
* See alsoDerived terms
* dismal sciencegloom
English
Noun
(-)- the gloom of a forest, or of midnight
- Here was a surprise, and a sad one for me, for I perceived that I had slept away a day, and that the sun was setting for another night. And yet it mattered little, for night or daytime there was no light to help me in this horrible place; and though my eyes had grown accustomed to the gloom , I could make out nothing to show me where to work.
- A sullen gloom and furious disorder prevailed by fits.
Derived terms
* doom and gloom * gloomily * (l) (humorous) * gloomyVerb
(en verb)- The black gibbet glooms beside the way.
- Around all the dark forest gloomed .
- Ciss was a big, dark-complexioned, pug-faced young woman who seemed to be glooming about something.
- A bow window gloomed with limes.
- A black yew gloomed the stagnant air.
- Such a mood as that which lately gloomed your fancy.
- What sorrows gloomed that parting day.
