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Glum vs Miserable - What's the difference?

glum | miserable |

As adjectives the difference between glum and miserable

is that glum is despondent; moody; sullen while miserable is in a state of misery: very sad, ill, or poor.

As a verb glum

is (obsolete) to look sullen; to be of a sour countenance; to be glum.

As a noun glum

is (obsolete) sullenness.

glum

English

Etymology 1

From (etyl) glomen, glommen, glomben, . More at (l).

Verb

(glumm)
  • (obsolete) To look sullen; to be of a sour countenance; to be glum.
  • (Hawes)

    Noun

    (-)
  • (obsolete) sullenness
  • (Skelton)

    Etymology 2

    Probably from (etyl) . More at (l).

    Adjective

    (glummer)
  • despondent; moody; sullen
  • * Thackeray
  • I frighten people by my glum face.

    miserable

    English

    Adjective

    (en-adj)
  • In a state of misery: very sad, ill, or poor.
  • *
  • *:Thanks to that penny he had just spent so recklessly [on a newspaper] he would pass a happy hour, taken, for once, out of his anxious, despondent, miserable self. It irritated him shrewdly to know that these moments of respite from carking care would not be shared with his poor wife, with careworn, troubled Ellen.
  • *, chapter=7
  • , title= The Mirror and the Lamp , passage=With some of it on the south and more of it on the north of the great main thoroughfare that connects Aldgate and the East India Docks, St.?Bede's at this period of its history was perhaps the poorest and most miserable parish in the East End of London.}}
  • * (George Bernard Shaw) (1856–1950)
  • *:The secret of being miserable is to have the leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure is occupation.
  • Very bad (at something); unskilled, incompetent.
  • :
  • Wretched; worthless; mean.
  • :
  • (lb) Causing unhappiness or misery.
  • *(William Shakespeare) (c.1564–1616)
  • *:What's more miserable than discontent?
  • (lb) Avaricious; niggardly; miserly.
  • :(Hooker)
  • Usage notes

    * Nouns to which "miserable" is often applied: life, condition, state, situation, day, time, creature, person, child, failure, place, world, season, year, week, experience, feeling, work, town, city, wage, job, case, excuse, dog.

    Synonyms

    * See also * See also

    Derived terms

    * miserablism * miserabilism * miserablist * miserabilist