sullen
Americanadjective
-
showing irritation or ill humor by a gloomy silence or reserve.
- Antonyms:
- cheerful
-
persistently and silently ill-humored; morose.
- Synonyms:
- bad-tempered , cranky , sour , moody , sulky
- Antonyms:
- cheerful
-
indicative of gloomy ill humor.
-
gloomy or dismal, as weather or a sound.
-
sluggish, as a stream.
-
Obsolete. malignant, as planets or influences.
adjective
-
unwilling to talk or be sociable; sulky; morose
-
sombre; gloomy
a sullen day
-
literary sluggish; slow
a sullen stream
-
obsolete threatening
noun
"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012Related Words
Other Word Forms
- sullenly adverb
- sullenness noun
- unsullen adjective
Etymology
Origin of sullen
First recorded in 1565–75; earlier sollen, solain, from Middle English solein(e), solain “sole, solitary, sullen,” possibly from Vulgar Latin sōlānus (unattested), from Latin sōlus “alone, only, single”
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
He was frequently anxious and sullen, a result of trauma from his birth mother’s drug use, according to his adoptive mother, Mallory Cooley.
But to bemoan the barely audible banality of it all – the dull motives, the mumbled attempts to shift blame, the sullen complaints about prison life and unsatisfactory psychiatric evaluations - is to miss the truth.
From BBC
He said the teenager came across as an "unremarkable, sullen, untalkative, gawky teenage boy" during their sessions together.
From BBC
She immediately picks up that something isn’t right between a mother who has come in with her sullen adolescent son.
From Los Angeles Times
Unlike so many queer films of the time, Lee’s movie was not a sullen documentary, nor was it about HIV/AIDS or gay people who get killed or turn out to be murderers themselves.
From Salon
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
