Definitions
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective Scotland, Northern Ireland
Bleak ,miserable ,dismal ,cheerless ,dreary .
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word dreich.
Examples
-
'dreich' (meaning dull or dreary) when referring to that city.
Toledo Newspaper 2009
-
These actors who – along with their enrapturing co-stars, Patricia Neal, Taylor, the luminous Ingrid Bergman, whose face I wanted to reach through the screen to touch – inspired a hunger for Hollywood biographies and autobiographies that continues to this, incalculably more dreich and dreary day.
Lucy Mangan: RIP Golden Age of Hollywood Lucy Mangan 2010
-
The sixpence it cost to be rid of their children, particularly on dreich winter Saturdays, was money well spent.
A Small Death in the Great Glen A. D. Scott 2010
-
He thought Scotland much like Baltic Poland in weather, if not landscape—drawn-out rains, mists and damp, cold, dreich days with an absence of light.
A Small Death in the Great Glen A. D. Scott 2010
-
Perhaps it's the yarn - it very grey and dreich, and just a little depressing.
Archive 2008-09-01 Cazzab 2008
-
He concluded that dreich, that good old Scottish standby, was far too mild for the scale of awfulness.
A Small Death in the Great Glen A. D. Scott 2010
-
Cloudscapes of great beauty highlighted the four-seasons-in-one-day phenomenon that was called weather in Scotland, but often it was dreich for days, sometimes weeks, on end.
A Small Death in the Great Glen A. D. Scott 2010
-
Perhaps it's the yarn - it very grey and dreich, and just a little depressing.
More knitting Cazzab 2008
-
A Scottish word to describe the weather is dreich!
-
Like Baum's Kansas, everything about her world is grey: the dialogue is leaden; the skies are dreich; it is always icily cold; and clothing is tattered and dirty.
bilby commented on the word dreich
Miserable, bleak (Scots).
November 29, 2007
goatboy commented on the word dreich
The only way to describe Scottish weather
January 24, 2008
karensa commented on the word dreich
I doubt there's an English equivalent which so perfectly encapsulates a certain kind of Scottish weather.
August 2, 2009
knitandpurl commented on the word dreich
"It was a bitter cold Sunday, wet and misty, dismal, dreich, everything as dripping and grey as only Inverness in November can be; we stood at the Memorial by the river in our uniforms with the Provost and his wife and some people from the council and the British Legion, and we each stepped forward in turn below the names carved on it to do this thing, the weight of which, the meaning and resonance of which, I didn't really understand, thought I'd thought I knew all about war and the wars, until I got home after it and my parents, with a kindness that was quiet and serious, sat me down in the warm back room, made me a mug of hot chocolate then sat there with me in a silence, not a companionable silence, more mindful than that."
"Good voice" by Ali Smith, p 35 of Public Library and Other Stories
February 20, 2017