- Word History, Word Explorer, Word Parts
|part of speech:
||full of gloom; sad.
It was a dismal day when we sold the house I grew up in.
- dreary, gloomy, somber
- cheerful, rosy
- similar words:
- black, bleak, dark, drab, grim, melancholy, miserable, sad, sullen
||cloudy, dim, dull, murky, overcast
||dismally (adv.), dismalness (n.)
is from dies male
, a Latin phrase that means "evil days." In medieval Britain, two days in each month were marked on the calendar as unlucky days.