Library / English Dictionary

CHEERLESS

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (adjective) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Causing sad feelings of gloom and inadequacy

Example:

an uncheerful place

Synonyms:

cheerless; depressing; uncheerful

Classified under:

Adjectives

Similar:

blue; dark; dingy; disconsolate; dismal; drab; drear; dreary; gloomy; grim; sorry (causing dejection)

melancholy; somber; sombre (grave or even gloomy in character)

Also:

unhappy (experiencing or marked by or causing sadness or sorrow or discontent)

joyless (not experiencing or inspiring joy)

Attribute:

cheer; cheerfulness; sunniness; sunshine (the quality of being cheerful and dispelling gloom)

Derivation:

cheerlessness (a feeling of dreary or pessimistic sadness)

Credits

 Context examples: 

He ranged far and wide, and slept but little in the lair that had now become cheerless and miserable.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

North, south, east, and west—he might turn where he would, but all was equally chill and cheerless.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Cold and cheerless, the wind beating on our faces, the white seas roaring by, we struggled through the day.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

But these objections had all, with that happy ardour of youth which Marianne and her mother equally shared, been overcome or overlooked; and Elinor, in spite of every occasional doubt of Willoughby's constancy, could not witness the rapture of delightful expectation which filled the whole soul and beamed in the eyes of Marianne, without feeling how blank was her own prospect, how cheerless her own state of mind in the comparison, and how gladly she would engage in the solicitude of Marianne's situation to have the same animating object in view, the same possibility of hope.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

If he could think himself of so much use, one gleam of day might, by possibility, penetrate into the cheerless dungeon of his remaining existence—though his longevity is, at present (to say the least of it), extremely problematical.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

So bare and cheerless was the outlook, and so few and poor the dwellings, that Sir Nigel began to have fears as to whether he might find food and quarters for his little troop.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)