different between drear vs murky

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

English

Alternative forms

• mirky

Etymology

From Middle English mirky; equivalent to murk +? -y. Related to Old Norse myrkr, Russian ???? (mrak), Serbo-Croatian ?????.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?m??(?)ki/
• Rhymes: -??(?)ki

Adjective

murky (comparative murkier, superlative murkiest)

1. Hard to see through, as a fog or mist.
2. Dark, dim, gloomy.
3. Cloudy, indistinct, obscure.
4. Dishonest, shady.

Synonyms

• dark

Related terms

• murk
• murkily
• murkiness

Translations

Further reading

• murky in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• murky in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.