Word.ws English Dictionary

gloom

UK/ɡluːm//ɡlum/

gloom noun: darkness, dimness, or obscurity.

Noun

gloom (usually uncountable, plural glooms)

  1. (usually) Darkness, dimness, or obscurity.
    • the gloom of a forest, or of midnight
    • Here was a surprise, and a sad one for me, for I perceived that I had slept away a day, and that the sun was setting for another night. And yet it mattered little, for night or daytime there was no light to help me in this horrible place; and though my eyes had grown accustomed to the gloom, I...[1898], J[ohn] Meade Falkner, Moonfleet, London; Toronto, Ont.: Jonathan Cape, published 1934, →OCLC
  2. (usually) A depressing, despondent, or melancholic atmosphere.
    • A sudden little river crossed my path / As unexpected as a serpent comes. / No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms— / This, as it frothed by, might have been a bath / For the fiend's glowing hoof—to see the wrath / Of its black eddy bespate with flakes and spumes.1855, Robert Browning, “‘Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came.’”, in Men and Women […], volume I, London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC, stanza 19, page 142
    • Although it's always crowded
      You still can find some room
      For broken-hearted lovers
      To cry there in their gloom.1956, “Heartbreak Hotel”, Mae Boren Axton, Tommy Durden, Elvis Presley (lyrics), performed by Elvis Presley
    Synonyms:
    An atmosphere of gloom descended on the assembled crowd.
  3. (usually) Cloudiness or heaviness of mind; melancholy; aspect of sorrow; low spirits; dullness.
    • A sullen gloom and furious disorder prevailed by fits.1770, Edmund Burke, Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents
  4. (usually) A drying oven used in gunpowder manufacture.

Verb

gloom (third-person singular simple present glooms, present participle glooming, simple past and past participle gloomed)

  1. (intransitive) To be dark or gloomy.
    • Here, while the proud their long drawn pomps diſplay, / There the black gibbet glooms beſide the way.1770, [Oliver] Goldsmith, The Deserted Village, a Poem, London: […] W[illiam] Griffin, […], →OCLC, page 17
    • Around all the dark forest gloomed.1891, Charles Egbert Craddock [pseudonym; Mary Noailles Murfree], In the "Stranger People's" Country, New York: Harper & Brothers, →OCLC, page 323
  2. (intransitive) To look or feel sad, sullen or despondent.
    • Her face gathers, furrows, glooms; arching eyebrows wrinkle into horizontals, and a tinge of bitterness unsmooths the cheek and robs the lip of sweetened grace. She is evidently perturbed.1882, W. Marshall, Strange Chapman: A North of England Story, volume 2, London: Hurst and Blackett, →OCLC, page 170
    • Ciss was a big, dark-complexioned, pug-faced young woman who seemed to be glooming about something.a. 1930, D. H. Lawrence, The Lovely Lady
  3. (transitive) To render gloomy or dark; to obscure; to darken.
    • A black yew gloom'd the stagnant air.1855, Alfred Tennyson, “The Letters”, in Maud, and Other Poems, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, page 115
  4. (transitive) To fill with gloom; to make sad, dismal, or sullen.
    • For see you not, dear love, / Such a mood as that, which lately gloom'd / Your fancy when you saw me following you, / Must make me fear still more you are not mine, […]1859, Alfred Tennyson, “Vivien”, in Idylls of the King, London: Edward Moxon & Co., […], →OCLC, page 110
    • Good Heaven! What ſorrows gloom'd that parting day, / That called them from their native walks away; […]1770, [Oliver] Goldsmith, The Deserted Village, a Poem, London: […] W[illiam] Griffin, […], →OCLC, page 20
  5. To shine or appear obscurely or imperfectly; to glimmer.

gloom meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Bengali

gloom in Hindi

gloom, melancholy, lassitude, langour, dejection
अवसाद avsād

gloom in Tamil

அரையிருள், மனச் சோர்வு

gloom in Urdu

آزردگی, اندھیرا, دھندھ, ناامیدی, تیرگی, اداسی

gloom in Bengali

gloom, melancholy, angularity, crookedness
মল mol
More languagesFewer languages
gloom in Malayalam
ഇരുട്ട്, വിഷാദം, ഉന്മേഷക്കുറവ്, മൂടൽ
gloom in Kannada
ಮಬ್ಬು, ಮಳಮಳ, ಮಂಕು, ಕೊರಗು
gloom in Sanskrit
तमस् tamas

Examples of gloom in a sentence

  • On December 13, Maritime-liveried 66051 powers out of the early morning gloom with three repatriated Class 66s, on the 0809 Dollands Moor Sidings-Scunthorpe Redbourne Siding.2022 January 12, “News in pictures: Repatriated '66s' return home”, in RAIL, number 948, page 20:
  • "Is Maggie then astonishing too?"—and he gloomed out of his window.1904 November 10, Henry James, chapter XVI, in The Golden Bowl, volume I, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC, 1st book (The...
  • He gloomed for some moments above the round-topped table[.]1930, Norman Lindsay, Redheap, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, →OCLC, page 85:

All 40 example sentences with gloom

Synonyms of gloom

11 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of gloom

Forms of gloom

Noun
pluralglooms
Verb
third-person singular presentglooms
present participleglooming
past participlegloomed
pastgloomed

Plural of gloom: glooms

Origin of gloom

From Middle English *gloom, *glom, from Old English glōm (“gloaming, twilight, darkness”), from Proto-West Germanic *glōm, from Proto-Germanic *glōmaz (“gleam, shimmer, sheen”), from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰley- (“to gleam, shimmer, glow”). The English word is cognate with Norwegian glom (“transparent membrane”), Scots gloam (“twilight; faint light; dull gleam”).

Words formed from gloom

Phrases with gloom

Words that rhyme with gloom

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about gloom

What does gloom mean?
Gloom means darkness, dimness, or obscurity.
What is gloom in Hindi?
Gloom in Hindi is अवसाद (avsād). See Gloom meaning in Hindi.
How do you use gloom in a sentence?
On December 13, Maritime-liveried 66051 powers out of the early morning gloom with three repatriated Class 66s, on the 0809 Dollands Moor Sidings-Scunthorpe Redbourne Siding.
What part of speech is gloom?
Gloom can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce gloom?
Gloom is pronounced /ɡluːm/ (UK).
What is the plural of gloom?
The plural of gloom is glooms.

Words near gloom in the dictionary

  1. glond
  2. glonoin
  3. glonoine
  4. glonzo
  5. glook
  6. gloom
  7. gloom and doom
  8. gloom-and-doomer
  9. gloom-and-doomers
  10. gloomcore
  11. gloomed

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gloom (page history and authors); अवसाद (Hindi) (page history and authors); gloom (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); gloom (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); মল (Bengali) (page history and authors); gloom (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); gloom (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: En-us-gloom.ogg.

Cite this entry: “gloom.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/gloom. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.