dreary

English

Etymology

From Middle English drery, from Old English drēoriġ (“dreary, sad, sorrowful, mournful, pensive, causing grief, cruel, horrid, grievous, bloody, blood-stained, gory, glorious”), from Proto-Germanic *dreuzagaz (“bloody”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰreus- (“to break, break off, crumble”). Cognate with Dutch treurig (“sad, gloomy”), German traurig (“sad, sorrowful, mournful”), Old Norse dreyrigr (“bloody”). Related to Old English drēor (“blood, falling blood”), Old English drysmian (“to become gloomy”).

Pronunciation

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• Rhymes: -ɪəri

Adjective

dreary (comparative drearier or more dreary, superlative dreariest or most dreary)

1. (obsolete) Grievous, dire; appalling.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, I.vi:

     They gan to fight returne, increasing more / Their puissant force, and cruell rage attonce, / With heaped strokes more hugely, then before, / That with their drerie wounds and bloudy gore / They both deformed [...].

2. Drab; dark, colorless, or cheerless.

   It had rained for three days straight, and the dreary weather dragged the townspeople's spirits down.

   Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary...

Translations

drab

Bulgarian: тъжен (bg),мрачен (bg) Esperanto: malgaja (eo) French: terne (fr) m. and f.

Italian: melanconico (it) m., malinconico (it) m. Portuguese: melancólico (pt)

Anagrams

• yarder