dreary
/ˈdɹɪɹi//ˈdɹɪəɹi/
dreary adjective: drab; dark, colorless, or cheerless.
Adjective
dreary (comparative drearier or more dreary, superlative dreariest or most dreary)
- Drab; dark, colorless, or cheerless.
- It had rained for three days straight, and the dreary weather dragged the townspeople's spirits down.
- Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary...
- Synonyms:
- bleak, gloomy, cheerless, comfortless, dark, morose, depressing, desolate, dire, disconsolate
- Grievous, dire; appalling.
Noun
dreary (plural drearies)
- 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.
- I'm taking it all down. The trivialities. The ramblings. The drearies. The trites.2018, Tibor Fischer, The Thought Gang
dreary meaning in Urdu, Bengali, Malayalam and Kannada
dreary in Urdu
- افسردہ, بےکیف, بےلطف, دلگیر, لق و دق, ملول
dreary in Bengali
- বিষণ্ণ, আনন্দহীন
dreary in Malayalam
- ഉത്സാഹമില്ലാത്ത, ദുഃഖകരമായ, ഇരുണ്ട, വിരസമായ
dreary in Kannada
- ಹಾಳುಸುರಿಯುವ, ಮಂಕು ಕವಿದ, ಕಳೆಗೆಟ್ಟ, ಉತ್ಸಾಹವಿಲ್ಲದ, ಉತ್ಸಾಹಶೂನ್ಯ, ಹಾಳು ಸುರಿಯುತ್ತಿರುವ
Examples of dreary in a sentence
- 'Twould be a dreary, lonely spring at Carlyle without shortsome Jane to add color to her days.
- Behn had always associated the bourgeois with age, impotence, miserliness and dreary unflamboyance.
- "Dreary to explain and word all that gnashy science into flowery bower chat," said Emul.
Synonyms of dreary
30 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Forms of dreary
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| comparative | drearier |
| comparative | more dreary |
| superlative | dreariest |
| superlative | most dreary |
| Noun | |
| plural | drearies |
Origin of dreary
From Middle English drery, from Old English drēoriġ (“sad”), from Proto-West Germanic *dreuʀag, from Proto-Germanic *dreuzagaz (“bloody”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰrews- (“to break, break off, crumble”), equivalent to drear + -y. Cognate with Saterland Frisian trurich (“sad, dreary”), West Frisian treurich (“sad, dreary”), Dutch treurig (“sad, gloomy”), Low German trurig (“sad”), German traurig (“sad, sorrowful, mournful”), Old Norse dreyrugr, dreyrigr (“bloody, gory”), whence Icelandic dreyrugur (“bloody”). Related to Old English drēor (“blood, falling blood”), Old English drysmian (“to become gloomy”).
Words formed from dreary
Words that rhyme with dreary
Questions about dreary
- What does dreary mean?
- Dreary means drab; dark, colorless, or cheerless.
- What is dreary in Urdu?
- Dreary in Urdu is افسردہ, بےکیف, بےلطف. See Dreary meaning in Urdu.
- What part of speech is dreary?
- Dreary can be an adjective or a noun.
- How do you pronounce dreary?
- Dreary is pronounced /ˈdɹɪəɹi/ (UK).
Words near dreary in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: dreary (page history and authors); dreary (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); Dreary (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); dreary (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); dreary (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-deary.wav, en-us-dreary.ogg.
Cite this entry: “dreary.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dreary. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.