glum

comparative glummer · superlative glummest

1. Despondent; moody; sullen.

   I[…]frighten people by my glum face.

   1857–1859, W[illiam] M[akepeace] Thackeray, The Virginians. A Tale of the Last Century, volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury & Evans, […], published 1858–1859, →OCLC

   3 more examples

   […] and the prospect of three more days of teaching before the weekend break, Mr. MacPherson felt unusually glum.

   1959, Mordecai Richler, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz

   A glummer look replaced the already glum look on Arthur Dent's face.

   1982, Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything, page 23

   U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, who had sought to save Chevron during hours of argument in January, looks slightly glum in her seat at the counsel tables.

   2024 June 28, Mark Walsh, “Consider the wild gray squirrel, Kagan rebukes her colleagues as court overrules Chevron”, in SCOTUSblog

   Synonyms: cheerless, comfortless, bleak, dark, morose, depressing, desolate, dire

present singular third person glums · participle present glumming · participle past glummed · past glummed

1. obsoleteTo look sullen; to be of a sour countenance; to be glum.

   upon me he gan to loure and glum, Enforcing him so for to ryse withall, But that I shortly unto hem did cum, With his thre hedes he spytte all his venum

   1509, Stephen Hawes, The Passetyme of Pleasure

1. obsoleteuncountablesullenness

   That they be deaf and dumb, And play silence and glum

   c. 1550, John Skelton, Colyn Cloute