Link Centre Dictionary

bleak

UK/bliːk/ US/ˈblik/ fairly common

adjective

1.

offering little or no hope

  • “the future looked black”
  • “prospects were bleak”
  • “Life in the Aran Islands has always been bleak and difficult” J.M.Synge
  • “took a dim view of things”
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2.

providing no shelter or sustenance

  • “bare rocky hills”
  • “barren lands”
  • “the bleak treeless regions of the high Andes”
  • “the desolate surface of the moon”
  • “a stark landscape”
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3.

unpleasantly cold and damp

  • “bleak winds of the North Atlantic”
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Origin

From Middle English bleke (also bleche, whence the English doublet bleach (“pale, bleak”)), and bleike (due to Old Norse), and earlier Middle English blak, blac (“pale, wan”), from Old English blǣc, blǣċ, blāc (“bleak, pale, pallid”) and Old Norse bleikr (“pale, whitish”), all from Proto-Germanic *blaikaz (“pale, shining”). Cognate with Dutch bleek (“pale, wan, pallid”), Low German blek (“pale”), German bleich (“pale, wan, sallow”), Danish bleg (“pale”), Swedish blek (“pale, pallid”), Norwegian Bokmål bleik, blek (“pale”), Norwegian Nynorsk bleik (“pale”), Faroese bleikur (“pale”), Icelandic bleikur (“pale, pink”).

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Word family

WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.