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dismal
in a sentence

show 187 more with this conextual meaning
  • That was a dismal morning.   (source)
    dismal = depressing or gloomy
  • If you think it ain't dismal and lonesome out in a fog that way by yourself in the night, you try it once—you'll see.   (source)
  • At this dismal time we were evidently all possessed by the idea that we were followed.   (source)
  • ...she's gone to the Lake of the Dismal Swamp,
    Where, all night long, by a fire-fly lamp,
    She paddles her white canoe.†   (source)
  • It had been painted white a long time ago, but the paint, where it hadn't peeled off altogether, had turned a dismal gray.†   (source)
  • In mid-1944, in response to the dismal results of Pacific rescue searches, the AAF implemented a vastly enhanced rescue system.†   (source)
  • The Great Faith Elementary and Secondary School, one of the largest black schools in the county, was a dismal end to an hour's journey.†   (source)
  • Such dismal feelings however do not often persist in the clear light of morning, when you are young.†   (source)
  • But in Baltimore City, where Northern High School was located, it was a dismal 38 percent.†   (source)
  • It was usual for new staff members to be greeted with applause, but none of the staff or students chapped except Dumbledore and Hagrid, who both put their hands together and applauded, but the sound echoed dismally into the silence, and they stopped fairly quickly.†   (source)
  • It was a request stop on the side of the hill, just past a large pair of open iron gates, and it looked uninviting and dismal.†   (source)
  • They cheat on their wives, hate their work, and lead dismal lives as respectable failures.†   (source)
  • It didn't matter who was at fault for his dismal life.†   (source)
  • Yes, Grandmother nodded, that was certainly true—nevertheless, the girl was dismal, superstitious company, and what Lydia needed on Christmas Eve was company.†   (source)
  • The imperial mountain of Vatican City rose before him as a dismal reminder of what men could accomplish when they put their minds to it.†   (source)
  • My aim is dismal to say the least, and Julian is very careful to steer clear of my practicing, but it becomes easier and easier for me to call up the lightning.†   (source)
  • As we headed out of London by the dismal West-way, he gave me his condensed version: no property law, therefore no capital, therefore no wealth.†   (source)
  • He joked about George W. Bush, about the administration's dismal response to the disaster so far.†   (source)
  • Full well the busy whisper circling round Conveyed the dismal tidings when he frowned.†   (source)
  • Large, squat buildings spread out on dismally landscaped sandy lots, with overhangs and open spaces to make them feel modern.†   (source)
  • To even smaller, more dismal rooms.†   (source)
  • Christmas that year was a dismal affair, but it's always dismal when you're far from home.†   (source)
  • It was barren, dismal, chaotic.†   (source)
  • Not any more, I thought, dismally, surveying the thinned-out trickle of pedestrians hurrying past Bergdorf's.†   (source)
  • It was cold and low and gray and raining, a dismal rain much like the one that had lasted so long earlier in the fall, and he kindled the fire with dry wood he'd set aside the night before when he'd seen the clouds moving in.†   (source)
  • She started herding us all toward a dismal conference room—aluminum blinds and folding chairs and a clutch of bored reporters—and up onto the platform.†   (source)
  • Suddenly a cluster of his own memories burst through the dismal cloud left by the Shade's malevolent mind.†   (source)
  • Even by day Capricorn's village appeared curiously deserted, and not just because of the many empty houses, which looked even more dismal in the sunlight.†   (source)
  • The rest of the day passed slowly, dismally.†   (source)
  • He is nervous to have her in his place, aware that he has put nothing up on his walls, that he has not bothered to buy lamps to replace the dismal glow of the ceiling light.†   (source)
  • We'd load up the trailer full of goods from the warehouses and drive though the Dismal Swamp around Portsmouth and Norfolk.†   (source)
  • The story of the birth of Jesus, and of hope, is placed almost on the shortest, and therefore most dismal (preelectric) day of the year.†   (source)
  • If, in my present dismal mood, I had just stepped off a ship, Station would possibly see it, but not understand why I felt the way I did, and would not be able to draw any conclusions from it.†   (source)
  • Sophie could hear something loud and dismal playing in the background Lacrimosa maybe, or Amorphis.†   (source)
  • By the end of June, even though the railroads still had not dropped their fares, paid attendance at the exposition had more than doubled, the average for the month rising to 89,170 from May's dismal 37,501.†   (source)
  • I hated the dismal place full of sick and suffering women, but we had to go back, again and again, for Betsie's condition was growing worse.†   (source)
  • In the black again with no light but the thin spear of the snowmobile's headlamp, terror closed in on him again, a childlike fear, dismal and disheartening.†   (source)
  • The neighborhood got more and more dismal.†   (source)
  • The vampire who made me was everything that I truly believed evil to be: he was as dismal, as literal, as barren, as inevitably eternally disappointing as I believed evil had to be!†   (source)
  • Simon is the weaselly little one with the bad haircut and dismal fashion sense.†   (source)
  • Garbage chutes lined the walls on all four sides of the dismal little basement.†   (source)
  • These young folks need to know that the way to escape their often dismal situations is contained within themselves.†   (source)
  • But she maintained the prejudices of her husband, and she did not want to visit a cold, dismal city where the women did not leave their houses except to attend five o'clock Mass and where, she had been told, they could not enter ice cream parlors or public offices, and where the funerals disrupted traffic at all hours of the day or night, and where it had been drizzling since the year one: worse than in Paris.†   (source)
  • I've already breached so many rules of professional conduct in this whole dismal mess that the Journalists Association would undoubtedly expel me if they knew about it.†   (source)
  • These are the kinds of services that Kenna's record was given to—and the results were dismal.†   (source)
  • I hesitate to tell Grandfather because it is such a dismal one.†   (source)
  • Again the ball left Marcie's hand, arching through the dismal sky.†   (source)
  • Scrawled in Dr. Begbie's dismal handwriting was the note, Subject 3285 hit her head against the ground and lost consciousness.†   (source)
  • But above it a small lamp was swaying, and creaking dismally in the cold.†   (source)
  • She called for a car and slouched dismally in the back as it took her all the way up Central Park West.†   (source)
  • However he accomplishes it, if he can make you laugh in those dismal situations and still get the job done, he'll go far.†   (source)
  • Far off in this seemingly dismal land were bands of people dressed in furs and animal skins, huddled close to small campfires.†   (source)
  • Today I decide I will stick it out until the last dismal question about tax structures.†   (source)
  • A dismal demon who was mostly mouth, he was ready at a moment's notice to offer misinformation on any subject.†   (source)
  • As May wanes, the whole senior class seems locked in a fitful finale, taking the final tally of dismal achievement and stunted opportunity into the hot summer.†   (source)
  • And the buffalo coat had saved Cholo's life when he was trapped in an April blizzard up on the Dismal River.†   (source)
  • Last night's scene of violence when the injured child was brought home went dismally before his eyes.†   (source)
  • The air of the bus was stained with smells: urine (maybe my own, Kate thought dismally) and sweat and vomit.†   (source)
  • His wealth was in land, upwards of 54,000 acres, including some 8,000 acres at Mount Vernon, another 4,000 acres in Virginia's Dismal Swamp, nearly all of which he had acquired for speculation.†   (source)
  • They looked, to tell the truth, very grey and dismal as they climbed out of their bunks and there was a good deal of yawning.†   (source)
  • There was some interest in me when it was learned that I had lived in Africa, but my dismal performance in class, and then my resolve to work hard and improve, did nothing to help me make friends.†   (source)
  • In between these two low points of his birth and his success lay thirty-one dismal years of loneliness and frustration.†   (source)
  • He led me through dark, dismal corridors—corridors far more suited to an execution, I thought, than the beautiful spring day outside, with its brilliant blue sky and tufted clouds.†   (source)
  • If I filed for divorce, I knew in my heart that Moody would spirit my daughter away to a dismal life in Iran.†   (source)
  • THE EVENING IS THE MOST DISMAL YET.†   (source)
  • Another dismal night was in prospect.†   (source)
  • I alone had signed up for this misadventure, and I alone would navigate it to some conclusion, although I was now petrified that it might be a very dismal end.†   (source)
  • They were gazing across the front lawn, brown and dismal in the dead of winter.†   (source)
  • The rain echoed dismally up the culvert.†   (source)
  • Shall we repair there and remove ourselves from this dismal, damp night?†   (source)
  • Some sections of the tunnel were lit dimly from open grates high above us, other parts were dark and dismal.†   (source)
  • Indeed it was dark, Max reflected—too murky for midday and far too dismal to discuss such disturbing matters.†   (source)
  • I can't bring myself to ruin it for them, not when their lives are ordinarily so dismal.†   (source)
  • But that seems kind of dismal and anticlimactic (there you go, Miss Tyler, my new vocabulary word for the day—and it means something like a letdown).†   (source)
  • I had good moments and bad, terrified thoughts and confident ones—though my terror-to-confidence ratio was pretty dismal at present, like three-to-one, and in the terrified moments it felt like I was being pushed into a role I hadn't asked for; volunteered for front-line duty in a war, the full scope of which none of us yet knew.†   (source)
  • Their English teacher, who had been reading aloud from a textbook, interrupted himself to say that he had the attention of 70 percent of the class, and that 70 percent was a "dismal figure."†   (source)
  • He was sure that the administration was growing increasingly agitated with the publicity the case was drawing, and they had to know that the defense would do everything they could to draw the proceedings out, no matter how dismal the prospects for a victory looked.†   (source)
  • His first few attempts were dismal failures.†   (source)
  • It disturbed her that the once bright morning had turned into a dismal gray day.†   (source)
  • As dismal as it was, it still appeared as an oasis for these thirsty, weary kids.†   (source)
  • The air was now clearer and colder, and though still far off, the walls of Mordor were no longer a cloudy menace on the edge of sight, but as grim black towers they frowned across a dismal waste.†   (source)
  • Mother's stumbling brings me back to my dismal reality.†   (source)
  • She would have seized upon a job in a five-and-ten, or in that laundry, or in any of the dismal shops she passed.†   (source)
  • Dismal failure has followed many of my most earnest efforts.†   (source)
  • I wanted them to place a value on their lives, which for the most part were dismal.†   (source)
  • In Dart's mind, though, Sanctuary was a magically bright oasis in a dismal wasteland.†   (source)
  • Which always sounded mighty dismal to me; but it never happened.†   (source)
  • A score of seared aspens, as brittle as charcoal, imprinted a stark geometry on the dismal sky.†   (source)
  • In fact, Ford had been anticipating yet another dismal night.†   (source)
  • Row houses passed in a slow, dismal stream—their rear windows drably curtained or blanked out with curling paper shades, their back porches crammed with barbecue grills and garbage cans, their yards a jumble of rusty cast-off appliances.†   (source)
  • The meeting we held in the room that night was both dismal and funereal in tone.†   (source)
  • They had some kind of a fruit cocktail, rather dismal.†   (source)
  • Even the cabin was dismal and damp.†   (source)
  • Secretly I doubted it too, but although the plane rattled and groaned dismally, she managed to take off.†   (source)
  • It was a shock, like walking from the dismal swamps into sudden brilliant sunlight.†   (source)
  • The train would be arriving in the riverside station, a dismal quay filled with heat, commotion, dust.†   (source)
  • The waste of it all, she thought dismally.†   (source)
  • It's such a dismal, foggy evening.†   (source)
  • " 'No bone breakers,' " Rod repeated, and knew dismally that the rule would work against him; Bruce had him on height and reach and weight.†   (source)
  • His campaign for Al Smith also failed, and failed dismally.†   (source)
  • The washing-up was so dismally real that Bilbo was forced to believe the party of the night before had not been part of his bad dreams, as he had rather hoped.   (source)
    dismally = depressingly
  • It was the first I ever see it growing, and it made the woods look solemn and dismal.   (source)
    dismal = depressing or gloomy
  • There, there, child, don't look so dismal.   (source)
    dismal = gloomy or unhappy
  • "Imagine marrying anybody in this heat!" cried Jordan dismally.   (source)
    dismally = gloomy
  • She looked dismally about her narrow little room,   (source)
    dismally = in a sad, depressed manner
  • This dismal shade must separate me from the world:   (source)
    dismal = depressing
  • Everything was dismally still.   (source)
    dismally = depressingly
  • The Widow Douglas she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when I couldn't stand it no longer I lit out.   (source)
    dismal = depressing or gloomy
  • I declare, when I got back to Sotherton yesterday, it looked like a prison—quite a dismal old prison.   (source)
    dismal = gloomy or depressing
  • The door of Scrooge's counting-house was open that he might keep his eye upon his clerk, who in a dismal little cell beyond, a sort of tank, was copying letters.   (source)
    dismal = depressing or gloomy
  • …poor Miss Crawford, who had just been contemplating the dismal rain in a very desponding state of mind, sighing over the ruin of all her plan of exercise for that morning, and of every chance of seeing a single creature beyond themselves for the next twenty-four hours,   (source)
    dismal = gloomy or depressing
  • It was not in impenetrable shadow as the other objects in the yard were, but had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar.   (source)
    dismal = gloomy
  • At this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and shook its chain with such a dismal and appalling noise, that Scrooge held on tight to his chair, to save himself from falling in a swoon.   (source)
    dismal = gloomy and causing loss of hope
  • What right have you to be dismal?   (source)
    dismal = depressed and feeling hopeless
  • Built upon a dismal reef of sunken rocks, some league or so from shore, on which the waters chafed and dashed, the wild year through, there stood a solitary lighthouse.   (source)
    dismal = gloomy
  • He had made it halfway through his sandwich as Vic reviewed the dismal train of events in his mind.†   (source)
  • And there under the harsh ceiling lights we saw a dismal sight.†   (source)
  • She wishes she had put on a coat, since herbright frock shines amid the dismal surroundings.†   (source)
  • I realized immediately that it was a dismal situation.†   (source)
  • Given the dismal record of raft-bound men, Mac's despair was reasonable.†   (source)
  • They have the cost dismal notions of immortality to begin with.†   (source)
  • Sometimes I worked in the office too—dismal, dingy place.†   (source)
  • Those were the only two things to be seen in the dark sky; they made a dismal group.†   (source)
  • Isabelle leaned against the doorjamb, her expression dismal.†   (source)
  • Many doubted in their hearts, wondering to what dismal end their journey led.†   (source)
  • His efforts at fishing the lakes and half-frozen streams had been dismal failures as well.†   (source)
  • The dismal truth was that they were caught between terrible forces.†   (source)
  • Pippa leads us down and into a tapestry-lined room, which is as dismal as a tomb.†   (source)
  • Now, suddenly, Moody's career was in jeopardy, my father was dying, and the future looked dismal.†   (source)
  • Right now things look dismal for Fröken Salander.†   (source)
  • A kind of record for me that dismal day.†   (source)
  • It shall be for us who remain behind in this dry and dismal vale to finish his great work.†   (source)
  • Altogether, the circular valley presented a dismal picture.†   (source)
  • His thoughts broke up into the dismal fancies of anxiety.†   (source)
  • The spring weather was still sporadic—cold and dismal one day, perfectly warm the next.†   (source)
  • Brother Leon regarded them pityingly, shaking his head, a sad and dismal smile on his lips.†   (source)
  • Dusk would be on them soon, followed by another wet dark dismal night.†   (source)
  • Dismal places, bleak and cold, hardly more than heaps of rubble.†   (source)
  • If anything, the domestic markets had weakened, and foreign trade was dismal.†   (source)
  • They had given the Starks Harrenhal and taken Winterfell, a dismal exchange.†   (source)
  • It was some dismal inn off Weasel Alley, and I put on servant's garb to get past Father's guards?'†   (source)
  • They looked southward across the dismal waste.†   (source)
  • It was wine he wanted, though—sour, dark, and dismal.†   (source)
  • It was a dismal welcome for the strangers.†   (source)
  • He wondered what point on this dismal path these particular does had reached.†   (source)
  • Outside, a dreary January rain had bogged the dismal village of Washington in a sea of mud.†   (source)
  • Sophie I could barely see in the dismal light.†   (source)
  • Adam let out his breath gently, pressing down the dismal fear.†   (source)
  • Indeed the dismal downpour made my intended visit to Niagara Falls seem redundant.†   (source)
  • He looked about, but there seemed nowhere even for an animal to crawl into in this dismal country.†   (source)
  • His few hours' sleep had not been nearly enough; he was tired and rather dismal.†   (source)
  • Trying to make this place fit for human habitation,' said Sirius, waving a hand around the dismal kitchen.†   (source)
  • Certainly his technique of suggestion has not been productive: the vegetables have been a dismal failure.†   (source)
  • Even the weather was dismal; all this chilly mist in the middle of July...It wasn't right, it wasn't normal...He turned over the second page of the memo, saw how much longer it went on, and gave it up as a bad job.†   (source)
  • Dumbledore had shown Harry that Voldemort sought grandeur or mystique in his hiding places; this dismal gray corner of London was as far removed as you could imagine from Hogwarts of the Ministry or a building like Gringotts, the Wizarding banks, with its gilded doors and marble floors.†   (source)
  • It was a dismal exercise.†   (source)
  • Fie described the diet of recycled botulism and salmonella, sent lists of the different multi-legged creatures he'd found in his room, moaned about the inferior quality of the mood-altering substances for sale in the dismal student mall.†   (source)
  • Unsatisfied, with a feeling of anticlimax in her throat and the dismal roiling of emotional upset in her belly, she went to the cellar to get her dress material.†   (source)
  • It was as dark and dismal as ever.†   (source)
  • Dismal.†   (source)
  • Dismal casting," she told him.†   (source)
  • 'Good catch,' Harry told Ginny back in the common room, where the atmosphere resembled that of a particularly dismal funeral.†   (source)
  • And although they might look very elegant from a distance, with feathers and satins, up close you could see that their dresses were soiled and ill-fitting, as every stitch on their backs was rented by the day, and they scarcely had enough left over for their bread; and it was a dismal sort of life, and she wondered they did not throw themselves into the lake; which some did, and were often found floating about in the harbour.†   (source)
  • It's why I'm so gloomy and dismal.†   (source)
  • Oh dear, don't look so dismal!†   (source)
  • It seemed a doomed house, stranded here among the numerous small wooden houses, its high empty windows looking out on what must have been a dismal clutter of low roofs, a comer grocery, and a small adjacent bar...But the broad, dark grounds protected the house somewhat from these things, and I had to move along the fence quite a few feet before I finally spotted a faint glimmer in one of the lower windows through the thick branches of the trees.†   (source)
  • For one thing, on her way to the lane, Laura is gratuitously accosted by a large dog "running by like a shadow" Upon getting to the bottom, she crosses the "broad road" to go into the dismal lane.†   (source)
  • We both came from this dismal hellhole of a town in New Jersey, and she got endless crap because her dad was black and her mom was white.†   (source)
  • I ran over broken glass and rubble, Irish Rose bottles, and occasional dismal patches of weeds and loose dirt.†   (source)
  • The fox escaped as well, and on our way back to the Dreadfort my favorite courser came up lame, so all in all it was a dismal day.†   (source)
  • The dank and dismal fortnight Cersei spent at Greenstone, the seat of House Estermont, was the longest of her young life.†   (source)
  • The streets and alleyways were cloaked in shadows the color of tarnished silver, and the water in its stone-lined channel was dark and dismal and laced with streaks of blood.†   (source)
  • His mother had noticed his interest, and though Christmas was usually a dismal affair, she'd somehow persuaded his father to spend money on a small camera and two boxes of film when Richard was ten years old.†   (source)
  • He gulped and gripped the hawthorn staff once more, striving to ignore the mead and to concentrate upon what was immediate and tangible, instead of wallowing in dismal introspection.†   (source)
  • — 1893 LONDON THE NIGHT WAS COLD AND DISMAL, AND OUT ON THE Thames, the rivermen cursed their luck.†   (source)
  • Like everyone else in the restaurant, she'd grown up in Southport, which she described as being a paradise for children, families, and the elderly, but the most dismal place on earth for single people.†   (source)
  • We kept each other laughing, bitterly, and waited for Jamie, fresh and back from a weekend at Stowe or Hunter Mountain, to fill our dismal lives.†   (source)
  • Too dismal right now.†   (source)
  • The Fingers were a dismal place, she'd heard, and there was something forlorn and desolate about the little tower.†   (source)
  • Wednesday, April 6 Inspector Bublanski was in a dismal mood when he met Modig in the parking lot outside the hospital just before 7:00.†   (source)
  • To the right, at the edge of the industrial area, about 400 yards from the road, was a dismal brick building with a crumbling chimney stack.†   (source)
  • It astonished her that so many separate organizations were willing to do so much to bury Doc Daneeka, who, back in Pianosa, was having a terrible time trying to keep his head above the ground and wondered with dismal apprehension why his wife did not answer the letter he had written.†   (source)
  • There were slipcovers on all but two chairs, a cold fireplace and the dismal warmth of an electric heater with a cord twisting across the floor, a desk, its glass surface empty.†   (source)
  • In the face of dismal statistics regarding arrest, prosecution, and even full recovery for the victim, I saw no choice but to ignore the statistics.†   (source)
  • Very often the people who were seeking some remedy around their sentences were serving the most time, and to me their prospects seemed dismal without a real lawyer.†   (source)
  • He repeated several times his dismay at her having been stuck for so long in a dismal hole like Lonesome Dove.†   (source)
  • Now, in the dismal aftermath of defeat, the idea of risking the fate of America in defense of New York seemed so senseless that submitting to the "dispensations of Providence," as he said, was about the only recourse left.†   (source)
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