dismal

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. adj. Causing gloom or depression; dreary: dismal weather; took a dismal view of the economy.
2. adj. Characterized by ineptitude, dullness, or a lack of merit: a dismal book; a dismal performance on the cello.
3. adj. Obsolete Dreadful; disastrous.
4. n. Chiefly South Atlantic U.S. See pocosin. See Regional Note at pocosin.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. Gloomy; dreary; cheerless; melancholy; doleful; dolorous: originally, as an adjective, in the phrase dismal day or dismal days (see etymology), whence it was extended to any visible physical surroundings, or anything perceived or apprehended, tending to depress or chill the spirits.
2. n. See extract and etymology.
3. n. Gloom; melancholy; dumps: usually in the plural, in the phrase in the dismals.
4. n. plural Mourning-garments.
5. n. A name given in the southern Atlantic States, in the region bordering on the sea and sounds, and especially in North Carolina, to a tract of land, swampy in character, often covered by a considerable thickness of half-decayed wood and saturated with water. Some of the so-called dismals are essentially peat-swamps or bogs. They often inclose island-like knobs and hummocks of firm land. The soil and forest-growth of the dismals vary in different regions. The Great Dismal Swamp lies on the border of North Carolina and Virginia. Much of this is a peat-bog, and a very large part is covered by a stunted growth of shrubs and dwarfed trees.
6. n. The devil.
7. To feel dismal or melancholy.
8. n. plural The blues; the dumps; a state of gloominess or despondency: as, to be in the dismals.

Wiktionary

1. adj. Disappointingly inadequate.
2. adj. Gloomy and bleak.
3. adj. Depressing.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. adj. Fatal; ill-omened; unlucky.
2. adj. Gloomy to the eye or ear; sorrowful and depressing to the feelings; foreboding; cheerless; dull; dreary.

WordNet 3.0

1. adj. causing dejection