dreary
Americanadjective
-
drearier,
comparative
-
dreariest
superlative
-
causing sadness or gloom.
- Synonyms:
- comfortless, depressing, cheerless, drear, dismal, gloomy
- Antonyms:
- cheerful
-
dull; boring.
- Synonyms:
- tiresome, wearisome, monotonous, tedious
- Antonyms:
- interesting
-
sorrowful; sad.
adjective
-
sad or dull; dismal
-
wearying; boring
-
archaic miserable
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Adjectives
Etymology
Origin of dreary
before 900; Middle English drery, Old English drēorig gory, cruel, sad, equivalent to drēor gore + -ig -y 1; akin to Old Norse dreyrigr bloody, German traurig sad
Explanation
When something is dreary it's depressing or lifeless in a rainy-day way. I finished my work, there was nothing on TV, and the rain just wouldn't stop: what a dreary day! Dreary can refer to a feeling, a place, a time, or even a thing. It sounds a little like a combination of "drizzle" and "teary," and that's not a bad way to remember what it means. My grandmother's house was a dreary affair: run down, poorly lit, and silent but for the buzz of the fluorescent light in the cramped kitchen. Some might call the recession a depression: I call it dreary, either way. If the economy remains dreary like this much longer, I just might move to China.
Vocabulary lists containing dreary
100 SAT Words Beginning with "D"
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This Week in Words: September 4 - 8, 2017
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
What’s tiresome is that in learning about them we have to sit through a one-sided lecture of the usual dreary sort.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 14, 2026
It's a hobby that started six years ago, when he went to Shetland to see the northern lights - though the weather was so dreary he "didn't see anything".
From BBC ● Aug. 9, 2026
It is 9 p.m. on a dreary night in Shadow Hills, just miles away from the lush foothills of the Verdugo Mountains.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 18, 2026
Everything in “Mother Mary” feels like it exists in a dream within a dream: the tertiary characters who fade in and out of the narrative, the catchy yet indistinct pop songs, the dreary midnight-blue location.
From Salon ● Apr. 24, 2026
The wind of the world blew now from the West, and the great clouds were lifted high, floating away eastward; but still only a grey light came to the dreary fields of Gorgoroth.
From "The Return of the King" by J.R.R. Tolkien
It is a drearier and less-plausible dream than Mr. Lindsey admits.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 2, 2026
Allen closed his essay emphasizing the significance of Keaton’s death: “A few days ago the world was a place that included Diane Keaton. Now it’s a world that does not. Hence it’s a drearier world.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 13, 2025
He added that the world was now a "drearier" place without her in it.
From BBC ● Oct. 13, 2025
Instead of the chilling rationality of HAL in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” we got the drearier, very human awfulness of Microsoft’s Sydney — deceitful, irrational and sometimes plain old mean.
From New York Times ● Feb. 24, 2023
If Courtney and Jupiter take notice of my drearier demeanor post-field-trip-and-photo-discovery, neither lets on.
From "Odd One Out" by Nic Stone
And as an already sleep deprived, anxiety attack-prone person facing the darkest, dreariest season of the year, I figured it was worth a shot to try to nourish my way to a better attitude.
From Salon ● Dec. 25, 2023
"The problem with Pixar's latest feature isn't just that it's the animation house's dullest, dreariest, most spiritually empty to date. It's that it fails even on its own painstakingly contrived open-goal terms."
From BBC ● Jun. 14, 2022
After losing his bid for speaker, De León was stripped of his Appropriations chairmanship and relegated to one of the dreariest offices in the state Capitol.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 30, 2022
In the wrong hands, “Small Craft Warnings” could be one of America’s dreariest plays.
From Seattle Times ● Aug. 14, 2019
‘That’ll be a lot more fun than fiddling around with figures. I hate figures. Figures are probably the dreariest things on this earth.’
From "Boy: Tales of a Childhood" by Roald Dahl
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
