All 14 Uses of
somber
in
The Scarlet Letter
- Here, too, comes his owner, cheerful, sombre, gracious or in the sulks, accordingly as his scheme of the now accomplished voyage has been realized in merchandise that will readily be turned to gold, or has buried him under a bulk of incommodities such as nobody will care to rid him of.
Chpt Intr.sombre = serious--without humor or fununconventional spelling: This is a British spelling. Americans use somber.
- Even yet, though my thoughts were ultimately much absorbed in the task, it wears, to my eye, a stern and sombre aspect: too much ungladdened by genial sunshine; too little relieved by the tender and familiar influences which soften almost every scene of nature and real life, and undoubtedly should soften every picture of them.†
Chpt Intr.
- Accordingly, the crowd was sombre and grave.
Chpt 2sombre = serious--without humor or fununconventional spelling: This is a British spelling. Americans use somber.
- He was not ill-fitted to be the head and representative of a community which owed its origin and progress, and its present state of development, not to the impulses of youth, but to the stern and tempered energies of manhood and the sombre sagacity of age; accomplishing so much, precisely because it imagined and hoped so little.
Chpt 3sombre = seriousunconventional spelling: This is a British spelling. Americans use somber.
- It seemed not so wild a dream—old as I was, and sombre as I was, and misshapen as I was—that the simple bliss, which is scattered far and wide, for all mankind to gather up, might yet be mine.
Chpt 4sombre = serious--without humor or fununconventional spelling: This is a British spelling. Americans use somber.
- Public ceremonies, such as ordinations, the installation of magistrates, and all that could give majesty to the forms in which a new government manifested itself to the people, were, as a matter of policy, marked by a stately and well-conducted ceremonial, and a sombre, but yet a studied magnificence.
Chpt 5sombre = seriousunconventional spelling: This is a British spelling. Americans use somber.
- Her own dress was of the coarsest materials and the most sombre hue, with only that one ornament—the scarlet letter—which it was her doom to wear.†
Chpt 5
- As the two wayfarers came within the precincts of the town, the children of the Puritans looked up from their play,—or what passed for play with those sombre little urchins—and spoke gravely one to another.
Chpt 7 *sombre = very solemn or seriousunconventional spelling: This is a British spelling. Americans use somber.
- The day was chill and sombre.†
Chpt 16
- Continually, indeed, as it stole onward, the streamlet kept up a babble, kind, quiet, soothing, but melancholy, like the voice of a young child that was spending its infancy without playfulness, and knew not how to be merry among sad acquaintance and events of sombre hue.
Chpt 16sombre = serious--without humor or fununconventional spelling: This is a British spelling. Americans use somber.
- Throwing his eyes anxiously in the direction of the voice, he indistinctly beheld a form under the trees, clad in garments so sombre, and so little relieved from the gray twilight into which the clouded sky and the heavy foliage had darkened the noontide, that he knew not whether it were a woman or a shadow.†
Chpt 17
- The great black forest--stern as it showed itself to those who brought the guilt and troubles of the world into its bosom--became the playmate of the lonely infant, as well as it knew how. Sombre as it was, it put on the kindest of its moods to welcome her.
Chpt 18sombre = serious--without humor or fununconventional spelling: This is a British spelling. Americans use somber.
- She made the sombre crowd cheerful by her erratic and glistening ray, even as a bird of bright plumage illuminates a whole tree of dusky foliage by darting to and fro, half seen and half concealed amid the twilight of the clustering leaves.
Chpt 22
- It bore a device, a herald's wording of which may serve for a motto and brief description of our now concluded legend; so sombre is it, and relieved only by one ever-glowing point of light gloomier than the shadow:— "ON A FIELD, SABLE, THE LETTER A, GULES"
Chpt 24sombre = seriousunconventional spelling: This is a British spelling. Americans use somber.
Definition:
-
(somber as in: a somber mood) serious (without cheer or lightheartedness); or sad