dreary
/ˈdɹɪəɹi/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.08 in modern English
10
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
2
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "It had rained for three days straight, and the dreary weather dragged the townspeople's spirits down."
- "Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary..."
- "It was on a dreary night of November, that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils."
- "The train is booked to stop at Jiza for only three minutes, but more often than not twenty minutes or more are spent on shunting before it sets off again on what must be one of the most dreary journeys in the world."
- "In the glow of this project Steele manages to forget altogether the parade of donnish and scholastic drearies, the barricades of schoolbooks, texts, examinations with which he has dealt so faithfully."
- "I'm taking it all down. The trivialities. The ramblings. The drearies. The trites."
Etymology
From Middle English drery, from Old English drēoriġ (“sad”), from Proto-West Germanic *dreuʀag, from Proto-Germanic *dreuzagaz (“bloody”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰrews- (“to break, break off, crumble”), equivalent to drear + -y. Cognate with Saterland Frisian trurich (“sad, dreary”), West Frisian treurich (“sad, dreary”), Dutch treurig (“sad, gloomy”), Low German trurig (“sad”), German traurig (“sad, sorrowful, mournful”), Old Norse dreyrugr, dreyrigr (“bloody, gory”), whence Icelandic dreyrugur (“bloody”). Related to Old English drēor (“blood, falling blood”), Old English drysmian (“to become gloomy”).
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: drery, drēoriġ, *dreuʀag, *dreuzagaz, *dʰrews-
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈdɹɪəɹi/
- British English: /ˈdɹɪəɹi/
Usage
Inflected Forms
drearier (comparative)
more dreary (comparative)
dreariest (superlative)
most dreary (superlative)
drearies (plural)