Dreary

How to spell dreary

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce dreary

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does dreary mean?

1. adjectiveDull, gloomy, and lacking in cheer or brightness.

Dreary in a sentence

• The dreary winter sky kept everyone indoors all weekend.

• After months in that dreary office, she longed for a job with windows.

Where does dreary come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Dreary is a genuinely old native English word, descending from the Old English dreorig, which originally meant 'gory' or 'bloody' before it softened into 'sad' and 'dismal'. That adjective was built on the noun dreor, meaning 'flowing blood' or 'gore', which in turn came from the verb dreosan, 'to fall' or 'to drip', the same Germanic root that gave us 'drizzle' and 'drowsy'. Over the centuries the grim, blood-soaked sense faded and the word came to describe anything cheerless, dull, or depressingly gloomy, especially grey weather and tedious surroundings. The spelling preserves the older 'drear' stem with the 'ea' vowel, which is the main trap, since the word is pronounced with a long 'ee' sound that tempts writers toward 'ee' or 'ie'. The bare adjective 'drear' still survives as a poetic form, but the everyday word is dreary.

How the word is built

• drear (gloomy, dismal)
• -y (adjective suffix)