DISMAL • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Dismal

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/dˈɪzməl/ Listen

adjective

Dismal adj.

Fatal; ill-omened; unlucky. (Obs.) "An ugly fiend more foul than dismal day."

Gloomy to the eye or ear; sorrowful and depressing to the feelings; foreboding; cheerless; dull; dreary; as, a dismal outlook; dismal stories; a dismal place. "Full well the busy whisper, circling round, Convey'd the dismal tidings when he frowned." "A dismal description of an English November."

Synonyms: Dreary; lonesome; gloomy; dark; ominous; ill-boding; fatal; doleful; lugubrious; funereal; dolorous; calamitous; sorrowful; sad; joyless; melancholy; unfortunate; unhappy.

See images of 'Dismal'

Etymology of 'Dismal'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar

"Dismal" Quotes from Famous Books

... means to ends, to say nothing of the eager spirit of application manifested by the busy population, produces an impression on the mind of no common character. Besides which, the town itself, so ill-arranged and ugly, is a spectacle; and in the people that inhabit the dismal streets, the visitor may find studies in morality as well ...

— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various

... scene drew to its close, she became calmer. She reflected that some sort of registry would be kept of the graves. A few dismal monuments, and two rows of little black wooden crosses that stuck up mournfully out of the snow, gave proof positive of that. She counted the crosses. Stampa was standing near the seventh from a tomb easily recognizable at some future time. Bower faced it on his knees. She could not see him ...

— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy

... sail, but he didn't make much headway, I thought. At last some four or five of us were summoned to our meal in an adjoining room. It was cold as Iceland —no fire at all —the landlord said he couldn't afford it. Nothing but two dismal tallow candles, each in a winding sheet. We were fain to button up our monkey jackets, and hold to our lips cups of scalding tea with our half frozen fingers. But the fare was of the most substantial kind —not only meat and potatoes, but dumplings; good ...

— Moby-Dick • Melville

... close cells as they sleep in at night,—it almost stifled me to think of it,—and so dismal and cheerless, too, with an iron door to bolt them in. On Sunday they stay in their cells nearly all day, and some of the cells are so dark that they cannot see even to read the Bible allowed them: and there they lie, thinking over, and over, ...

— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern

... dog wandered about throughout that dismal day, which seemed interminable. Nothing interested them, even the very things that had made the other days pass so quickly and so happily. Nothing except gloomily watching Tom, whose actions would have plainly proved his guilt to "Scotty" had the man not been ...

— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling

More quotes...