dreary

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   Drab; dark, colorless, or cheerless.

   It had rained for three days straight, and the dreary weather dragged the townspeople's spirits down.

2. 2
   noun

   A dreary person or thing.

   In the glow of this project Steele manages to forget altogether the parade of donnish and scholastic drearies, the barricades of schoolbooks, texts, examinations with which he has dealt so faithfully.

3. 3
   adj

   causing dejection

4. 4
   adj

   lacking in liveliness or charm or surprise

Simplified etymology

Dreary was an Old English word that originally meant “gory” or “bloody.” It came from a word meaning “gore,” related to Old English drēosan, “to drop” or “fall”; the modern sense “depressingly dull and bleak” emerged only in the mid-17th century.

From Middle English drery, from Old English drēoriġ (“sad”), from Proto-Germanic *dreuzagaz (“bloody”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰrews- (“to break, break off, crumble”), equivalent to drear + -y. Cognate with Dutch treurig (“sad, gloomy”), Low German trurig (“sad”), German traurig (“sad, sorrowful, mournful”), Old Norse dreyrigr (“bloody”). Related to Old English drēor (“blood, falling blood”), Old English drysmian (“to become gloomy”).

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External links

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