dismal Meaning, Definition & Usage

  1. adjective satellite causing dejection
    blue; dingy; drear; disconsolate; dreary; dark; gloomy; drab; sorry; grim.
    • 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

WordNet

Dis"mal adjective
Etymology
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.
Definitions
  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.

Webster 1913