gloom
Americannoun
-
total or partial darkness; dimness.
- Antonyms:
- brightness
-
a state of melancholy or depression; low spirits.
- Synonyms:
- sadness, despondency, dejection
- Antonyms:
- cheerful
-
a despondent or depressed look or expression.
verb (used without object)
-
glooms,
present (3rd person singular)
-
gloomed,
past participle, past
-
glooming
present participle
-
to appear or become dark, dim, or somber.
-
to look sad, dismal, or dejected; frown.
verb (used with object)
-
glooms,
present (3rd person singular)
-
gloomed,
past participle, past
-
glooming
present participle
-
to fill with gloom; make gloomy or sad; sadden.
-
to make dark or somber.
noun
-
partial or total darkness
-
a state of depression or melancholy
-
an appearance or expression of despondency or melancholy
-
poetic a dim or dark place
verb
-
(intr) to look sullen or depressed
-
to make or become dark or gloomy
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
-
undergloomnoun
-
outgloomverb (used with object)
-
ungloomverb (used with object)
-
gloomfuladjective
-
gloomlessadjective
-
gloomfullyadverb
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
gloomsimple
-
gloomssimple
-
have gloomedperfect
-
has gloomedperfect
-
am gloomingprogressive
-
are gloomingprogressive
-
is gloomingprogressive
-
have been gloomingperfect progressive
-
has been gloomingperfect progressive
Past
-
gloomedsimple
-
had gloomedperfect
-
was gloomingprogressive
-
were gloomingprogressive
-
had been gloomingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of gloom
1300–50; Middle English gloumben, glomen to frown, perhaps representing Old English *glūmian (akin to early German gläumen to make turbid); see glum
Explanation
Gloom is a hazy darkness or dimness. The gloom of a moonless autumn evening is perfect for trick-or-treating, but not so perfect for sizing up your candy stash. It might make you nervous to walk in the gloom of your friend's rural neighborhood at night if you're used to well-lit city streets. And while gloom perfectly describes the near-dark of dusk or a foggy evening, it can also describe a dark, dismal mood. Your brother's gloom when his favorite basketball team loses in the playoffs will only deepen if your favorite team wins the tournament. Gloom is a Scottish word, originally meaning "a sullen look."
Vocabulary lists containing gloom
"Still I Rise" by Maya Angelou
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Billie Holiday (1915–1959) Tribute List
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"The Blue and the Gray" by Francis Miles Finch
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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.
See Examples For:
Everything seemed against it, from the heavy narration to the creature’s dark insides and the lead’s isolated gloom.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 15, 2026
The party atmosphere at full-time was in stark contrast to the general gloom that has surrounded the club lately.
From BBC ● Oct. 11, 2026
It might not be all doom and gloom for the retail sector.
From Barron's ● Oct. 5, 2026
But the study’s results weren’t all doom and gloom.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 3, 2026
Dimly, Jonah realized that she may have been trying to aggravate him, to jolt him out of his gloom.
From "Found" by Margaret Peterson Haddix
Perhaps this is just the last defiant cry of a defeated Imperial-sponsored bounty hunter, determined to give our hero the glooms about her chances of victory before departing this mortal coil.
From The Guardian ● Apr. 7, 2016
Long-term ideas of “destiny” are not easily assimilated to shorter-term glooms about the loss of American power and prestige.
From Slate ● Nov. 21, 2011
He glooms that it costs him plenty to be cheap, since he feels he has to tip extra because of it.
From Time Magazine Archive
Church adored Turner, the greatest theatrician of landscape who ever lived, with his cloud arches and burning transparencies, his glooms and veils of color.
From Time Magazine Archive
‘Wind is changing!’ he cried, and with that, in a twinkling as it seemed, he and his fellows had vanished into the glooms, never to be seen by any Rider of Rohan again.
From "The Return of the King" by J.R.R. Tolkien
James Redd gloomed when Cow Creek flooded his farm, brightened when he harvested $200 worth of lost balls washed from a neighboring golf course.
From Time Magazine Archive
In it, jobbers gloomed that they are under the thumb of Fruit Dispatch.
From Time Magazine Archive
In their concern, the people hoped for the best, prepared for the worst, gloomed at the sinkings and took courage from their heroes.
From Time Magazine Archive
"The shattered moderate leadership of the party," gloomed the Milwaukee Journal, "may be unable to pick itself up off the floor and do serious battle."
From Time Magazine Archive
Sergeant Tozier had come up, that big-nosed man, towered over the lieutenant, gloomed down at him.
From "The Killer Angels: The Classic Novel of the Civil War" by Michael Shaara
The contrast between the way these people talk about the world, the performative doom ’n’ glooming so prevalent in social media and casual conversation, and their actual, lived concerns seems the point of Rooney’s fiction.
From Slate ● Sep. 1, 2021
Having perused well the chronicle of the week, the Vigilant Patriot views with alarm: A green glooming fluid in a sticky bottle.
From Time Magazine Archive
More often than not, crusaders for causes try to rally support by glooming over the darkness of their situation.
From Time Magazine Archive
Meanwhile in Manhattan, old-line publishers were glooming because there were no new writers to replace the big names rapidly dying off: Ruskin, Tennyson, Carlyle, Emerson, etc.
From Time Magazine Archive
The turtle paddled steadily toward her, a hump of shell glooming dark in the gray waves, and heaved herself onto the sand.
From "Nim’s Island" by Wendy Orr
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