DISMAL
blue, dark, dingy, disconsolate, dismal, gloomy, grim, sorry, drab, drear, dreary
(adjective) causing dejection; “a blue day”; “the dark days of the war”; “a week of rainy depressing weather”; “a disconsolate winter landscape”; “the first dismal dispiriting days of November”; “a dark gloomy day”; “grim rainy weather”
Source: WordNet® 3.1
Etymology
Adjective
dismal (comparative more dismal, superlative most dismal)
Disappointingly inadequate.
Gloomy and bleak.
Depressing.
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 also cheerless
Anagrams
• almids
Source: Wiktionary
Dis"mal, a. Etym: [Formerly a noun; e. g., "I trow it was in the
dismalle." Chaucer. Of uncertain origin; but perh. (as suggested by
Skeat) from OF. disme, F. dîme, tithe, the phrase dismal day properly
meaning, the day when tithes must be paid. See Dime.]
1. Fatal; ill-omened; unlucky. [Obs.]
An ugly fiend more foul than dismal day. Spenser.
2. 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. Goldsmith.
A dismal description of an English November. Southey.
Syn.
– Dreary; lonesome; gloomy; dark; ominous; ill-boding; fatal;
doleful; lugubrious; funereal; dolorous; calamitous; sorrowful; sad;
joyless; melancholy; unfortunate; unhappy.
Source: Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary 1913 Edition