doleful
/ˈdəʊlfʊl
/ /ˈdəʊlf(ə)l/adjective
1Expressing sorrow; mournful: a doleful look...
- In one, a lifelike depiction of a young man with doleful, melancholy eyes lies within the still, tightly bound wrappings of the mummy.
- Nicholas watched her with his doleful blue eyes as she walked away.
- The old dilapidated building where the two women meet each other is made even more gloomy and doleful by an unexpected downpour.
Synonyms
mournful, woeful, sorrowful, sad, unhappy, depressed, dismal, gloomy, morose, melancholy, miserable, forlorn, wretched, woebegone, despondent, dejected, disconsolate, downcast, crestfallen, downhearted, heartbroken, heavy-hearted, despairing, desolate, grief-stricken;
tearful, teary, lachrymose
informal blue, down, down in the mouth, down in the dumps, weepy
literary dolorous
archaic heartsick, heartsore
1.1Causing grief or misfortune: he could be struck off, with doleful consequences...
- There can be no joy in war: it is always repulsive in actual detail, but if we are not left with the facts, then the world is deprived even of doleful experience of the battlefield.
- Bureaucracy plays its usual doleful part in the process, of course.
Derivatives
dolefully
/ /ˈdəʊlf(ə)li / adverb ...- Thus, in Die Walküre you feel something dolefully inevitable in the social restrictions on human will that allegorically require the break between the paternal god and his illegitimate warrior daughter.
- We could throw around the words ‘reprehensible’ and ‘deplorable’ and dolefully express our great disappointment in his leadership.
- We decide on a scorpion fish, a rich ruby red, its spiky fins laid harmlessly by its side, its wide round eye staring up at us dolefully.
dolefulness
/ /ˈdəʊlf(ə)lnəs / noun ...- Between them, her bright hair in a tumble down the flying tangerine dispersal of her cloak, the Magdalene prostrates herself like an alighted butterfly, the amber splendours of her hands outstretched in her dolefulness.
- The tale has many tragic turns but he and his cast largely forego the high-minded dolefulness in favour of camp theatrics.
- The widespread topiary is part of the national trend towards dolefulness in appearance and attitude.