All 22 Uses of
dismal
in
Nicholas Nickleby
- This appeal set the widow upon thinking that perhaps she might have made a more successful venture with her one thousand pounds, and then she began to reflect what a comfortable sum it would have been just then; which dismal thoughts made her tears flow faster, and in the excess of these griefs she (being a well-meaning woman enough, but weak withal) fell first to deploring her hard fate, and then to remarking, with many sobs, that to be sure she had been a slave to poor Nicholas, and…†
Chpt 3
- The night and the snow came on together, and dismal enough they were.†
Chpt 5
- They were no sooner gone, than Miss Squeers fulfilled the prediction of her quondam friend by giving vent to a most copious burst of tears, and uttering various dismal lamentations and incoherent words.†
Chpt 9
- As the jarring echoes of the heavy house-door, closing on its latch, reverberated dismally through the building, Kate felt half tempted to call him back, and beg him to remain a little while; but she was ashamed to own her fears, and Newman Noggs was on his road homewards.†
Chpt 11
- He had arranged a few regular lessons for the boys; and one night, as he paced up and down the dismal schoolroom, his swollen heart almost bursting to think that his protection and countenance should have increased the misery of the wretched being whose peculiar destitution had awakened his pity, he paused mechanically in a dark corner where sat the object of his thoughts.†
Chpt 12
- 'Tell me,' urged Smike, 'is the world as bad and dismal as this place?'†
Chpt 12
- The child raised a dismal cry, by way of answer, and Mr Squeers, throwing himself into the most favourable attitude for exercising his strength, beat him until the little urchin in his writhings actually rolled out of his hands, when he mercifully allowed him to roll away, as he best could.†
Chpt 13
- The very chimneys appear to have grown dismal and melancholy, from having had nothing better to look at than the chimneys over the way.†
Chpt 14
- They were no sooner audible, than Mrs Kenwigs, opining that a strange cat had come in, and sucked the baby's breath while the girl was asleep, made for the door, wringing her hands, and shrieking dismally; to the great consternation and confusion of the company.†
Chpt 15
- 'Was it a dismal one in your time?' asked Nicholas, scarcely able to repress a smile.†
Chpt 16
- I should be sorry to contradict anybody; but I can only say that I've heard the French prisoners, who were natives, and ought to know how to speak it, talking in such a dismal manner, that it made one miserable to hear them.†
Chpt 16
- Quite overcome by these dismal reflections, Mr and Mrs Curdle sighed, and sat for some short time without speaking.†
Chpt 24
- But allusion being made to her being held in disregard by the gentlemen, she evinced violent emotion, and this blow was no sooner followed up by the remark concerning her seniority, than she fell back upon the sofa, uttering dismal screams.†
Chpt 28
- This Mr Crummles did in the highest style of melodrama, pouring forth at the same time all the most dismal forms of farewell he could think of, out of the stock pieces.†
Chpt 30
- But Mrs Nickleby was not to be so easily moved, for first she insisted on going upstairs to see that nothing had been left, and then on going downstairs to see that everything had been taken away; and when she was getting into the coach she had a vision of a forgotten coffee-pot on the back-kitchen hob, and after she was shut in, a dismal recollection of a green umbrella behind some unknown door.†
Chpt 33
- Mr Mantalini waited, with much decorum, to hear the amount of the proposed stipend, but when it reached his ears, he cast his hat and cane upon the floor, and drawing out his pocket-handkerchief, gave vent to his feelings in a dismal moan.†
Chpt 34
- Why, here's a dismal face for ladies' company!†
Chpt 35 *
- 'I hope not, Mr Browdie,' replied Miss Squeers, looking singularly dismal.†
Chpt 39
- CHAPTER 51 The Project of Mr Ralph Nickleby and his Friend approaching a successful Issue, becomes unexpectedly known to another Party, not admitted into their Confidence In an old house, dismal dark and dusty, which seemed to have withered, like himself, and to have grown yellow and shrivelled in hoarding him from the light of day, as he had in hoarding his money, lived Arthur Gride.†
Chpt 51
- But, Newman was too much interested, and too anxious, to betake himself even to this resource, and so, with many desponding and dismal reflections, went straight home.†
Chpt 52
- It was the same dark place as ever: every room dismal and silent as it was wont to be, and every ghostly article of furniture in its customary place.†
Chpt 56
- He had to pass a poor, mean burial-ground—a dismal place, raised a few feet above the level of the street, and parted from it by a low parapet-wall and an iron railing; a rank, unwholesome, rotten spot, where the very grass and weeds seemed, in their frouzy growth, to tell that they had sprung from paupers' bodies, and had struck their roots in the graves of men, sodden, while alive, in steaming courts and drunken hungry dens.†
Chpt 62
Definition:
-
(dismal) of terrible quality or depressing; or dark and dreary (as when bad weather blocks the sun or when it is drizzly)