Dismal

How to spell dismal

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce dismal

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does dismal mean?

1. adjectiveDepressingly gloomy, dreary, or showing a lack of cheer or success.

Dismal in a sentence

• The weather was so dismal that we cancelled the picnic.

• Sales figures for the quarter were frankly dismal.

Where does dismal come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Dismal has an unexpectedly literal origin in the medieval calendar. It comes from the Latin phrase dies mali, meaning 'bad days' or 'evil days', a set of two days in each month that medieval calendars marked as unlucky or unfavourable for any important undertaking. The Anglo-French form dis mal passed into Middle English, where 'the dismal' first referred to those unlucky days themselves. By the 1400s and 1500s the word had broadened from naming the days to describing anything gloomy, dreary, or depressing, and the -al ending settled it firmly into the family of English adjectives. The hidden Latin word 'mal', meaning 'bad', is the same element you see in 'malice', 'malady', and 'malfunction', which is a useful clue that dismal carries a sense of badness at its core. The spelling trap is the unstressed second syllable, where the 's' is pronounced like a 'z' and the vowel collapses to a faint schwa.

How the word is built

• dis- (from Latin dies: days)
• mal (from Latin mali: bad)
• -al (adjective suffix)