bleak
/bliːk/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 3.43 in modern English
11
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
1
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Example Sentences
- "When she came out she looked as pale and as bleak as one that were laid out dead."
- "a bleak and bare rock"
- "a bleak, crater-pocked moonscape"
- "They escaped across the bleak landscape."
- "We hiked across open meadows and climbed bleak mountains."
- "Wastes too bleak to rear / The common growth of earth, the foodful ear."
Etymology
From Middle English bleke (also bleche, whence the English doublet bleach (“pale, bleak”)), and bleike (due to Old Norse), and earlier Middle English blak, blac (“pale, wan”), from Old English blǣc, blǣċ, blāc (“bleak, pale, pallid”) and Old Norse bleikr (“pale, whitish”), all from Proto-Germanic *blaikaz (“pale, shining”). Cognate with Dutch bleek (“pale, wan, pallid”), Low German blek (“pale”), German bleich (“pale, wan, sallow”), Danish bleg (“pale”), Swedish blek (“pale, pallid”), Norwegian Bokmål bleik, blek (“pale”), Norwegian Nynorsk bleik (“pale”), Faroese bleikur (“pale”), Icelandic bleikur (“pale, pink”).