gloom
/ɡluːm
/noun [mass noun]
1Partial or total darkness: he strained his eyes peering into the gloom...
- The candles had burnt away to waxy stumps and the battery in one of the lamps had died through the night leaving her side sunk into darkness and gloom.
- I was working by the sunlight while the rest of the room was enshrouded in darkness and gloom.
- Something about the gloom and the darkness appealed to me, probably the same reason I loved horror movies.
Synonyms
darkness, semi-darkness, dark, gloominess, dimness, blackness, murkiness, murk, shadows, shade, shadiness, obscurity;
dusk, twilight, gloaming
rare tenebrosity
1.1 [count noun] literary A dark or shady place: the meadow-hen floats off, to sink into remoter shades and ferny glooms...
- Blacks, whites, shadows, glooms, and cobwebs are also used with formidable effect in the Satis House scenes in Great Expectations.
- He rode in a gloom full of sighing like voices and full of dropping like footsteps.
- His ingenious lighting did much to make the most of the subtle settings, some of which poured strange light into Stygian glooms.
2A state of depression or despondency: a year of economic gloom for the car industry his gloom deepened...
- The first of these seems to have caused a sense of gloom, despondency and weary hopelessness to descend on the author as he sat down to put his book together.
- Though a settler-farmer not dependent entirely on farm income for a living, even I am not able to escape this feeling of gloom and depression.
- This is not someone who views the way ahead with gloom and despondency.
Synonyms
despondency, depression, dejection, downheartedness, dispiritedness, heavy-heartedness, melancholy, melancholia, unhappiness, sadness, glumness, gloominess, low spirits, dolefulness, misery, sorrow, sorrowfulness, forlornness, woefulness, woe, wretchedness, lugubriousness, moroseness, mirthlessness, cheerlessness;
despair, pessimism, hopelessness, the slough of despond, negativity;
German Weltschmerz
informal the blues, the dumps
North American informal the blahs
rare mopery
verb [no object]
1 literary Have a dark or sombre appearance: the black gibbet glooms beside the way...
- Lucia looked outside and saw grey smoldered clouds glooming over her house, the redness of dawn shined behind its gloomy mask.
- Pretty soon, she was deep into her daydreams and didn't realize the peeved teacher glooming over her desk.
- He got to the end and stopped; a deadly silence gloomed.
1.1 [with object] Make dark or dismal: a black yew gloom’d the stagnant air
2Be or look depressed or despondent: Charles was always glooming about money...
- Of course they have every right to celebrate, after glooming for so long and not knowing what's going to happen, this serves as their first big break.
- Light and dark, the sun and the moon - don't let these dualities lead you to gloom.
- But sometimes, even how happy your day was there would come an instance where the sun would hide and we feel gloomed.
Phrases
gloom and doom
Origin
Late Middle English (as a verb): of unknown origin.