Word.ws English Dictionary

glum

/ɡlʌm/

glum adjective: despondent; moody; sullen.

Adjective

glum (comparative glummer, superlative glummest)

  1. Despondent; moody; sullen.
    • I[…]frighten people by my glum face.1857–1859, W[illiam] M[akepeace] Thackeray, The Virginians. A Tale of the Last Century, volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury & Evans, […], published 1858–1859, →OCLC
    • […] and the prospect of three more days of teaching before the weekend break, Mr. MacPherson felt unusually glum.1959, Mordecai Richler, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz

Verb

glum (third-person singular simple present glums, present participle glumming, simple past and past participle glummed)

  1. (obsolete) To look sullen; to be of a sour countenance; to be glum.
    • upon me he gan to loure and glum,
      Enforcing him so for to ryse withall,
      But that I shortly unto hem did cum,
      With his thre hedes he spytte all his venum1509, Stephen Hawes, The Passetyme of Pleasure

Noun

glum (uncountable)

  1. (obsolete) sullenness
    • That they be deaf and dumb,
      And play silence and glumc. 1550, John Skelton, Colyn Cloute

glum meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam

glum in Tamil

கவலை, வருத்தம்

glum in Urdu

مغموم

glum in Bengali

বিষণ্ণ, বিমর্ষ, মনমরা

glum in Malayalam

കുണ്ഠിതമായ, ദുർമനസ്കമായ, മ്ലാനമായ, ഖിന്നമായ
More languagesFewer languages
glum in Kannada
ಮಂಕಾದ, ಖಿನ್ನ, ವಿಷಣ್ಣ, ಬಾಡಿದ ಮೋರೆಯ

Examples of glum in a sentence

  • A glummer look replaced the already glum look on Arthur Dent's face.1982, Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything, page 23:
  • Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, who had sought to save Chevron during hours of argument in January, looks slightly glum in her seat at the counsel tables.2024 June 28, Mark Walsh, “Consider the wild gray squirrel, Kagan rebukes her colleagues as court overrules Chevron”, in SCOTUSblog:

Synonyms of glum

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of glum

Forms of glum

Adjective
comparativeglummer
superlativeglummest
Verb
third-person singular presentglums
present participleglumming
past participleglummed
pastglummed

Origin of glum

Probably from Middle Low German glum (“glum”), related to German dialectal glumm (“gloomy, troubled, turbid”). More at gloomy.

From Middle English glomen, glommen, glomben, gloumben (“to frown, look sullen”), from *glom (“gloom”). More at gloom. The noun is from Middle English glome, from the verb.

Words formed from glum

Words that rhyme with glum

42 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about glum

What does glum mean?
Glum means despondent; moody; sullen.
What is glum in Tamil?
Glum in Tamil is கவலை, வருத்தம். See Glum meaning in Tamil.
How do you use glum in a sentence?
A glummer look replaced the already glum look on Arthur Dent's face.
What part of speech is glum?
Glum can be an adjective, a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce glum?
Glum is pronounced /ɡlʌm/.

Words near glum in the dictionary

  1. Glujas
  2. glukodine
  3. glulam
  4. glulams
  5. glulisine
  6. glum
  7. glumaceous
  8. glumal
  9. glumamycin
  10. glume
  11. glumed

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: glum (page history and authors); glum (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); glum (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); Glum (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); glum (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); glum (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-glum.wav.

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