Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Dismal; bleak.
- adj. Boring; dull: dreary tasks.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Sorrowful; sad.
- Lonesomely dismal or gloomy; exciting a feeling of desolation, sadness, or gloom.
- Hence Exciting a feeling of tedium or ennui; tiresomely monotonous: as, a dreary book.
- Synonyms and Cheerless, comfortless, drear, dark. Tedious.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. obsolete Sorrowful; distressful.
- adj. Exciting cheerless sensations, feelings, or associations; comfortless; dismal; gloomy.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. causing dejection
- adj. lacking in liveliness or charm or surprise
Etymologies
- 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"). (Wiktionary)
- Middle English dreri, bloody, frightened, sad, from Old English drēorig, bloody, sad, from drēor, gore; see dhreu- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“He called to tell me he had decided that he would rather begin his stay at the clinic in Switzerland and attend the music conservatory during the holidays than remain at the Clairborne mansion for what he called another dreary Christmas.”
“It was the reward he had promised her for what he called her dreary, mechanical job of copying and copying.”
“It is what I call a dreary, dismal-looking town," said Miles to”
“Her use of the word "dreary" is a clever utilization of a subjective adjective (and a very Wordsworthian one).”
Wordsworth, the _Lyrical Ballads_, and Literary and Social Reform in Nineteenth Century America
“When we were packing up to leave last week I had occasion to re-fondle the Fyberspates yarn in dreary olive green which I had laid out to take to Alyth to donate to charity.”
“The restaurant and night-life industry may be buzzing downtown, but some of the biggest fireworks take place in dreary meeting rooms where tempers flare, tears are shed and the back and forth can stretch on for up to eight hours.”
The Wall Street Journal: Clubs, Eateries Target Local Boards
“After a few months in dreary England, Alfred Tayler went to the Empire Exhibition and was seduced by the thought of farming in Southern Rhodesia.”
“All things considered, it could be worse, but all of the grey and the dreary is sort of sapping my motivation.”
“Boston has had a fair share of cold, rainy and just plain dreary weather over the last couple of months.”
“Right now, we're in dreary Ohio but we're originally from New Jersey.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘dreary’.
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Old words
Old words: modern English words that are old according to criteria that are still vague: Either words common to several old languages or words substantially similar in old English. Please add to or...
mother, father, bark, spit, old, fire, this, that, black, thou, to give, hand and 259 more...
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macabre
words associated with the macabre & horror.
( open list, randomness )
more:
http://www.wordnik.co...ghastly, grisly, culeus, silly, gruesome, horrid, morbid, angelic, shocking, hideous, ghoulish, frightful and 138 more...
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Russian Doll Words
A Russian Doll word is a word that, when you remove the first and last letters, is either the empty string, or a Russian Doll word. These are all of the 6 or more letter Russian Doll words found in...
waspiness, upraisers, strainers, sporangia, raspiness, prelatess, methanals, gaspiness, washings, uprisers, upraises, upraiser and 2373 more...
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UK Usage - Find US Equivalent
All these terms have a (different) American English equivalent. Wonder if you can identify them?
abridgement (abri..., accoutrement, accoutre, acknowledgement (..., opposite, advert, adaptor, adapter, sticking plaster, advertise, adviser (advisor ..., adze, aesthete and 1196 more...
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The Secret Garden
sickly, fretful, toddle, cross, stammer, manor, slink, grind, disdain, imploringly, wring, wailing and 30 more...
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perrch
perch, fallow, gale, sparrows, dreary, crust, tramped, glare, plod, trudge, tramp, tumble and 13 more...
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Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
Down in the dumps, feeling blue? Here, then, is a list for you...
feeling blue, down in the dumps, blue devils, mulligrubs, mubblefubbles, melancholy, lugubrious, gloomy gus, eeyore, doleful, woeful, woebegone and 86 more...
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The Sog Collection
My big word list.
chaos, flaccid, empirical, flotsam, cacophony, grumble, assuage, awe, romance, mortality, coalesce, fortuitous and 3282 more...
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Miss Sunshine
she's such a joy.
bereaved, bitter, cheerless, dejected, depressed, despairing, despondent, disconsolate, dismal, distressed, doleful, downcast and 405 more...
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katiad's Words
exquisite, obnoxious, noxious, extravaganza, whirlwind, whirling, wild, spinster, existential, chaos, zephyr, blasphemy and 310 more...
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ADW1
obdurate, obstinate, behest, injunction, enjoin, circumspect, ensconce, discursive, lugubrious, doleful, somber, ken and 2476 more...
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monica's list
just words i think are pretty.
luminous, iridescent, crestfallen, wanderlust, autumn, autumnal, spark, candescence, exaltations, merry, empathy, tainted and 96 more...
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feeling words
twitterpated, loquacious, ambiguous, pensive, sluggish, anxious, adventurous, curious, abandoned, absent-minded, abrasive, abused and 653 more...
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Vocab++
Words as I learn them.
fetid, mezzanine, hiatus, austerity, subliminal, resplendent, implacable, impugn, debase, exiguous, cirque, holster and 2538 more...
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A spoonful of sugar
Words I should learn/I want to learn/I just learned, with a quotation to help the medicine go down.
approbation, assuage, chicanery, abscond, effrontery, enervation, equivocate, ennui, aftertaste, filibuster, perfunctory, abide and 391 more...
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stpeter's Words
abase, abasement, abashed, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abhorrent, abide, abject, ablation, abnegation and 3536 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for dreary.
Prolagus It's a dark and dreary night
Seems like nothing's going right
Won't you tell me honey how can I go on here without you?
("Ring Ring", by ABBA) May 19, 2008