- dismal
- dismal, dreary, cheerless, dispiriting, bleak, desolate are comparable when they mean devoid of all that makes for cheer or comfort. Dismal and dreary are often interchangeable.Dismal may indicate extreme gloominess or somberness utterly depressing and dejecting{
dismal acres of weed-filled cellars and gaping foundations— Felix Morley
}{rain dripped . . . with a dismal insistence— Costain
}{the most dismal prophets of calamity— Krutch
}Dreary may differ in indicating what discourages or enervates through sustained gloom, dullness, tiresomeness, or futility, and wants any cheering or enlivening characteristic{the most dreary solitary desert waste I had ever beheld— Bartram
}{it was a hard dreary winter, and the old minister's heart was often heavy— Deland
}{had the strength been there, the equipment was lacking. Harding's dreary appreciation of this was part of his tragedy— S. H. Adams
}Cheerless stresses absence of anything cheering and is less explicit than but as forceful as the others in suggesting a pervasive disheartening joy- lessness or hopelessness{he would like to have done with life and its vanity altogether ... so cheerless and dreary the prospect seemed to him— Thackeray
}Dispiriting refers to anything that disheartens or takes away morale or resolution of spirit{it was such dispiriting effort. To throw one's whole strength and weight on the oars, and to feel the boat checked in its forward lunge— London
}Bleak is likely to suggest chill, dull, barren characteristics that dishearten and militate against any notions of cheer, shelter, warmth, comfort, brightness, or ease{the bleak upland, still famous as a sheepwalk, though a scant herbage scarce veils the whinstone rock— J. R. Green
}{the sawmill workers of the bleak mountain shack towns— Amer. Guide Series: Calif
}{the bleak years of the depression— J. D. Hicks
}Desolate applies to what disheartens by being utterly barren, lifeless, uninhabitable or abandoned, and remote from anything cheering, comforting, or pleasant{a semibarren, rather desolate region, whose long dry seasons stunted its vegetation— Marvel
}{some desolate polar region of the mind, where woman, even as an ideal, could not hope to survive— Glasgowy
}
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
