doleful

comparative more doleful · comparative dolefuller · comparative dolefuler · superlative most doleful · superlative dolefullest · superlative dolefulest

1. Filled with grief, mournful, bringing feelings of sadness.

   A doleful expression that tugged at my heartstrings.

   5 more examples

   The doleful peal of the bell indicated another funeral was being held.

   A dungeon horrible, on all sides round, / As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames / No light; but rather darkness visible / Served only to discover sights of woe, / Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace / And rest can never dwell, hope never comes / That comes to all, but torture without end / Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed / With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed.

   1667, John Milton, “Book I”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC, lines 61–69

   O King this is very doleful. It is told that that traveller came at last to the utter End and there was a mighty gulf, and in the darkness at the bottom of the gulf one small god crept, no bigger than a hare, whose voice came crying in the cold: “I know not.” And beyond the gulf was nought, only the small god crying.

   1906, Lord Dunsany [i.e., Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany], Time and the Gods, London: William Heineman, →OCLC, page 55

   Monday. Delectatio morosa. I spend my doleful days in dumps and dolors. We (mother Haze, Dolores and I) were to go to Our Glass Lake this afternoon, and bathe, and bask; but a nacreous morn degenerated at noon into rain, and Lo made a scene.

   1955 September 15, Vladimir Nabokov, chapter 11, in Lolita, Paris: The Olympia Press […], →OCLC

   “We face a doleful future,” said Dr. Harvey V. Fineberg, a former president of the National Academy of Medicine.

   2020 April 18, Donald G. McNeil Jr., “The Coronavirus in America: The Year Ahead”, in New York Times

   Synonyms: dolesome, unhappy, cheerless, comfortless, bleak, dark, morose, depressing