Dismal vs Nefarious - What's the difference?
dismal | nefarious | Related terms |
Disappointingly inadequate.
* {{quote-news, year=2012, date=April 22, author=Sam Sheringham, work=BBC Sport
, title= Gloomy and bleak.
Depressing.
*, chapter=12
, title= Sinful, villainous, criminal, or wicked, especially when noteworthy or notorious for such characteristics.
* 1828 , , The Red Rover , ch. 2:
* 1877 , , The Life of Cicero , ch. 9:
* 1921 , , The Indiscretions of Archie , ch. 26:
* 2009 Oct. 14, Monica Davey, "
Dismal is a related term of nefarious.
As adjectives the difference between dismal and nefarious
is that dismal is disappointingly inadequate while nefarious is sinful, villainous, criminal, or wicked, especially when noteworthy or notorious for such characteristics.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 sciencenefarious
English
Adjective
(en adjective)- "If the vessel be no fair-trading slaver, nor a common cruiser of his Majesty, it is as tangible as the best man's reasoning, that she may be neither more nor less than the ship of that nefarious pirate the Red Rover."
- Mommsen . . . declares that Catiline in particular was "one of the most nefarious' men in that ' nefarious age. His villanies belong to the criminal records, not to history."
- The fact that the room was still in darkness made it obvious that something nefarious was afoot. Plainly there was dirty work in preparation at the cross-roads.
Fact Checker Finds Falsehoods in Remarks," New York Times (retrieved 12 May 2014):
- “I try to let everyone back here in Minnesota know exactly the nefarious activities that are taking place in Washington.”