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GLOOM
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I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
A feeling of melancholy apprehension
Synonyms:
gloom; gloominess; somberness; sombreness
Classified under:
Nouns denoting feelings and emotions
Hypernyms ("gloom" is a kind of...):
apprehension; apprehensiveness; dread (fearful expectation or anticipation)
melancholy (a feeling of thoughtful sadness)
Sense 2
Meaning:
A state of partial or total darkness
Example:
he struck a match to dispel the gloom
Synonyms:
gloom; somberness; sombreness
Classified under:
Nouns denoting stable states of affairs
Hypernyms ("gloom" is a kind of...):
semidarkness (partial darkness)
Derivation:
gloomy (depressingly dark)
Sense 3
Meaning:
An atmosphere of depression and melancholy
Example:
gloom pervaded the office
Synonyms:
gloom; gloominess; glumness
Classified under:
Nouns denoting stable states of affairs
Hypernyms ("gloom" is a kind of...):
ambiance; ambience; atmosphere (a particular environment or surrounding influence)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "gloom"):
cloud (a cause of worry or gloom or trouble)
bareness; bleakness; desolation; nakedness (a bleak and desolate atmosphere)
Context examples:
The weather added what it could of gloom.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
But the gloom of Lydia's prospect was shortly cleared away; for she received an invitation from Mrs. Forster, the wife of the colonel of the regiment, to accompany her to Brighton.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
I am a slow-witted man, said John, and, in sooth, when I try to think about such matters it casts a gloom upon me.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
The past, present, and future were all equally in gloom.
(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)
Mr. Micawber was for the most part plunged into deep gloom.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
For days on end, when the mood was on him, he has been sunk in the deepest gloom.
(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
In the gloom of evening therefore, he let himself down again; but when he had clambered down the wall he was terribly afraid, for he saw the enchantress standing before him.
(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)
The four travelers passed through the rest of the forest in safety, and when they came out from its gloom saw before them a steep hill, covered from top to bottom with great pieces of rock.
(The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum)
When we returned to Mrs. Warren’s rooms, the gloom of a London winter evening had thickened into one grey curtain, a dead monotone of colour, broken only by the sharp yellow squares of the windows and the blurred haloes of the gas-lamps.
(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
He expressed once, and but once in my hearing, a strong sense of the rugged charm of the hills, and an inborn affection for the dark roof and hoary walls he called his home; but there was more of gloom than pleasure in the tone and words in which the sentiment was manifested; and never did he seem to roam the moors for the sake of their soothing silence—never seek out or dwell upon the thousand peaceful delights they could yield.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
