different between bleak vs drear

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /bli?k/
• Rhymes: -i?k

Etymology 1

From Middle English bleke (also bleche > English bleach (“pale, bleak”)), and bleike (due to Old Norse), and earlier Middle English blak, blac (“pale, wan”), from Old English bl?c, bl??, bl?c (“bleak, pale, pallid, wan, livid; bright, shining, glittering, flashing”) and Old Norse bleikr (“pale, whitish”), from Proto-Germanic *blaikaz (“pale, shining”). Cognate with Dutch bleek (“pale, wan, pallid”), Low German blek (“pale”), German bleich (“pale, wan, sallow”), Danish bleg (“pale”), Swedish blek (“pale, pallid”), Norwegian Bokmål bleik, blek (“pale”), Norwegian Nynorsk bleik (“pale”), Faroese bleikur (“pale”), Icelandic bleikur (“pale, pink”).

Adjective

bleak (comparative bleaker, superlative bleakest)

1. Without color; pale; pallid.
   • 1563, John Foxe, Actes and Monuments

     When she came out she looked as pale and as bleak as one that were laid out dead.

2. Desolate and exposed; swept by cold winds.
   • 1793, William Wordsworth, Descriptive Sketches

     Wastes too bleak to rear / The common growth of earth, the foodful ear.
3. Unhappy; cheerless; miserable; emotionally desolate.

Synonyms

• (sickly pale): see also Thesaurus:pallid

Derived terms

• bleaken

Translations

Etymology 2

From Middle English bleke (“small river fish, bleak, blay”), perhaps an alteration (due to English bl?c (“bright”) or Old Norse bleikja) of Old English bl??e (“bleak, blay, gudgeon”); or perhaps from a diminutive of Middle English *bleye (“blay”), equivalent to blay +? -ock or blay +? -kin. See blay.

Noun

bleak (plural bleaks or bleak)

1. A small European river fish (Alburnus alburnus), of the family Cyprinidae.

Synonyms

• ablet
• alburn
• blay

Derived terms

• sunbleak

Translations

References

Anagrams

• Balke, Blake, Kaleb, blake

English

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /d???/

Etymology 1

Shortening of dreary.

Adjective

drear (comparative drearer, superlative drearest)

1. (poetic) Dreary.
   • 1794, William Blake, Earth's Answer, lines 1-2

     Earth raised up her head
     From the darkness dread and drear,

   • 1874, James Thomson, The City of Dreadful Night

     I spoke, perplexed by something in the signs
     Of desolation I had seen and heard
     In this drear pilgrimage to ruined shrines:

   • 1922, A. E. Housman, Last Poems, XXVIII, lines 1-2

     Now dreary dawns the eastern light,
     And fall of eve is drear, [...]

Etymology 2

Back-formation from dreary.

Noun

drear (plural drears)

1. (obsolete) Gloom; sadness.
   • 1596, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, VI.2:

     She thankt him deare / Both for that newes he did to her impart, / And for the courteous care which he did beare / Both to her love and to her selfe in that sad dreare.

Anagrams

• Rader, arder, arred, darer, rared, rear'd, reard