16 uses
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Definition
of terrible quality or depressing; or dark and dreary (as when bad weather blocks the sun or when it is drizzly)
- XVI Clifford's Chamber NEVER had the old house appeared so dismal to poor Hepzibah as when she departed on that wretched errand.Chapter 16 — Clifford's Chamber (0% in)
- It seemed a queer anomaly, that so gaunt and dismal a personage should take a toy in hand; a miracle, that the toy did not vanish in her grasp; a miserably absurd idea, that she should go on perplexing her stiff and sombre intellect with the question how to tempt little boys into her premises!Chapter 2 — The Little Shop-Window (60% in)
- But, even as a ray of sunshine, fall into what dismal place it may, instantaneously creates for itself a propriety in being there, so did it seem altogether fit that the girl should be standing at the threshold.Chapter 4 — A Day Behind the Counter (93% in)
- And as for myself, you see what I am,—a dismal and lonesome old woman (for I begin to call myself old, Phoebe), whose temper, I am afraid, is none of the best, and whose spirits are as bad as can be!Chapter 5 — May and November (28% in)
- Not surely her cousin Hepzibah's, who had no taste nor spirits for the lady-like employment of cultivating flowers, and—with her recluse habits, and tendency to shelter herself within the dismal shadow of the house—would hardly have come forth under the speck of open sky to weed and hoe among the fraternity of beans and squashes.Chapter 6 — Maule's Well (13% in)
- "This very day, remember" said he; and then added, in a low, self-communing voice, "Why should we live in this dismal house at all?Chapter 7 — The Guest (83% in)
- It will be a heavy responsibility, cousin, if you confine your brother to this dismal house and stifled air, when the delightful freedom of my country-seat is at his command.Chapter 8 — The Pyncheon of To-day (81% in)
- He read Phoebe as he would a sweet and simple story; he listened to her as if she were a verse of household poetry, which God, in requital of his bleak and dismal lot, had permitted some angel, that most pitied him, to warble through the house.Chapter 9 — Clifford and Phoebe (77% in)
- But, going up the staircase again, they found the whole interior of the house tenfold more dismal, and the air closer and heavier, for the glimpse and breath of freedom which they had just snatched.Chapter 11 — The Arched Window (79% in)
- —his conscience never doubted it;—and, little more than a whisper to his ear, it was a dismal shriek, and long reechoed so, in the region round his heart!Chapter 13 — Alice Pyncheon (76% in)
- "They can never do without you, now,—never, Phoebe; never—no more than if one of God's angels had been living with them, and making their dismal house pleasant and comfortable!Chapter 14 — Phoebe's Good-Bye (96% in)
- At last, finding no other pretext for deferring the torture that she was to inflict on Clifford,—her reluctance to which was the true cause of her loitering at the window, her search for the artist, and even her abortive prayer,—dreading, also, to hear the stern voice of Judge Pyncheon from below stairs, chiding her delay,—she crept slowly, a pale, grief-stricken figure, a dismal shape of woman, with almost torpid limbs, slowly to her brother's door, and knocked!Chapter 16 — Clifford's Chamber (47% in)
- Now, probably, they were felt to be in keeping with the dismal and bitter weather, and therefore did not stand out in strong relief, as if the sun were shining on them, but melted into the gray gloom and were forgotten as soon as gone.Chapter 17 — The Flight of Two Owls (15% in)
- "You are thinking of that dismal old house, and of Cousin Jaffrey"—here came the quake through him,—"and of Cousin Jaffrey sitting there, all by himself!Chapter 17 — The Flight of Two Owls (35% in)
- At a little distance stood a wooden church, black with age, and in a dismal state of ruin and decay, with broken windows, a great rift through the main body of the edifice, and a rafter dangling from the top of the square tower.Chapter 17 — The Flight of Two Owls (94% in)
- Very soon after their change of fortune, Clifford, Hepzibah, and little Phoebe, with the approval of the artist, concluded to remove from the dismal old House of the Seven Gables, and take up their abode, for the present, at the elegant country-seat of the late Judge Pyncheon.Chapter 21 — The Departure (51% in)
There are no more uses of "dismal" in The House of the Seven Gables.
Typical Usage
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