bleak
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: ipa: /bliːk/
rhymes: -iːk
Forms: form: bleaker
form: bleakest
Etymology: From Middle English bleke (also bleche, whence the English doublet bleach (“pale, bleak”)), and bleike (due to Old Norse), and earlier Middle English blak, blac (“pale, wan”), from Old English blǣc, blǣċ, blāc (“bleak, pale, pallid”) and Old Norse bleikr (“pale, whitish”), all from Proto-Germanic *blaikaz (“pale, shining”).
Cognate with Dutch bleek (“pale, wan, pallid”), Low German blek (“pale”), German bleich (“pale, wan, sallow”), Danish bleg (“pale”), Swedish blek (“pale, pallid”), Norwegian Bokmål bleik, blek (“pale”), Norwegian Nynorsk bleik (“pale”), Faroese bleikur (“pale”), Icelandic bleikur (“pale, pink”).
Senses: examples: text: When she came out she looked as pale and as bleak as one that were laid out dead.
ref: 1563 March 30 (Gregorian calendar), John Foxe, Actes and Monuments of These Latter and Perillous Dayes, […], London: […] Iohn Day, […], →OCLC:
synonyms: word: pasty
word: sallow
word: ashen
word: ashen-faced
word: ashy
word: blake
word: blanched
word: bleak
word: bloodless
word: chalky
word: exsanguious
word: ghastly
word: grey
word: livid
word: pale
word: pallid
word: pasty
word: sallow
word: wan
word: washed out
word: white
word: whey-faced
glosses: Without color; pale; pallid.
examples: text: a bleak and bare rock
text: a bleak, crater-pocked moonscape
text: They escaped across the bleak landscape.
text: We hiked across open meadows and climbed bleak mountains.
text: Wastes too bleak to rear / The common growth of earth, the foodful ear.
ref: 1793, William Wordsworth, Descriptive Sketches:
text: At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach, / A fisherman stood aghast, / To see the form of a maiden fair, / Lashed close to a drifting mast.
ref: 1840 January 10, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “[Ballads.] w:The Wreck of the Hesperus.”, in Ballads and Other Poems, 2nd edition, Cambridge, Mass.: […] John Owen, published 1842, →OCLC, stanza 20, page 47:
glosses: Desolate and exposed; swept by cold winds.
examples: text: Downtown Albany felt bleak that February after the divorce.
text: A bleak future is in store for you.
text: The news is bleak.
text: The survey paints a bleak picture.
text: But the bleakest Utopia of all, the very first of the Unutopias, had come from Wells long before that.
ref: 1978, The Spectator, volume 240, number 1, page 25:
text: The industrial shitscape of Los Angeles gave way to something even bleaker as I passed out of lonely Riverside into the wide-open range of horse stables and twisted trees and spinning giant wind turbines outside of Indio.
ref: 2011, Jesse James, American Outlaw, page 331:
text: Dany didn’t necessarily have to die, but letting her live would’ve been an assessment of humanity so bleak that even George R.R. Martin, it seems, wants to hope for something better.
ref: 2019 May 19, Alex McLevy, “The final Game Of Thrones brings a pensive but simple meditation about stories (newbies)”, in The A.V. Club, archived from the original on 22 May 2019:
synonyms: word: dismal
word: lugubrious
word: cheerless
word: comfortless
word: bleak
word: dark
word: depressing
word: desolate
word: dire
word: disconsolate
word: dismal
word: doleful
word: dolesome
word: drear
word: drearisome
word: dreary
word: dreich
word: forlorn
word: gayless
word: gray
word: gloomsome
word: gloomy
word: grim
word: joyless
word: lack-laughter
word: lugubrious
word: melancholy
word: mirthless
word: miserable
word: no joke
word: saturnine
word: solemn
word: somber
word: sombre
word: spiritless
word: sullen
word: sunless
word: uncheerful
word: uncheery
word: unhappy
word: unmerry
word: wintry
word: woeful
glosses: Unhappy; cheerless; miserable; emotionally desolate.
Derived terms: bleaken
bleakish
bleakly
bleakness
bleakonomics
bleaksome
unbleak