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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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:
Watch highlights as Harry Brook shines in the Headingley gloom as England build a commanding 195-run lead over Pakistan on a shortened second day of the first Test.
From BBC ● Aug. 20, 2026
Looking across the city, only a few patches of light survive, scattered in the gloom.
From Barron's ● Aug. 14, 2026
Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg has a response to the gloom about artificial intelligence coming from both inside and outside the industry.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 10, 2026
I’m tempted to diagnose the current gloom as the result of our own post-9/11 forever wars.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 4, 2026
Charles, who only the moment before had been sunk in gloom, glanced up and fixed her with a smile of great warmth and sweetness.
From "The Secret History" by Donna Tartt
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
But while a Tennessee Williams plumbs similar material to draw interior diagrams of crippled psyches, and a John Osborne casts about in it for new glooms and repeated angers.
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
Day was coming again in the world outside, and far beyond the glooms of Mordor the Sun was climbing over the eastern rim of Middle-earth; but here all was still dark as night.
From "The Return of the King" by J.R.R. Tolkien
Winston Churchill augustly gloomed: "A great world statesman has fallen, and with him his country will undergo a period of anxiety and perhaps a temporary eclipse."
From Time Magazine Archive
Alsop gloomed that the treatment of Kissinger—a product of the "enormous, Watergate-induced self-importance of the American press"—might further decrease the value of the dollar and put U.S. foreign policy "on the dung heap of disorder."
From Time Magazine Archive
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
"No," gloomed Lord Cranborne, "it is not being fortified by leave of anyone."
From Time Magazine Archive
Icons gloomed from the porticoes or raised stiff fingers in the glinting chapels.
From "Middlesex: A Novel" by Jeffrey Eugenides
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
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
After glooming for years over the falling U.S. birth rate, the U.S.
From Time Magazine Archive
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
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
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.
