gloom

noun

1. 1

   Darkness, dimness, or obscurity.

   the gloom of a forest, or of midnight

   Here was a surprise, and a sad one for me, for I perceived that I had slept away a day, and that the sun was setting for another night. And yet it mattered little, for night or daytime there was no light to help me in this horrible place; and though my eyes had grown accustomed to the gloom, I could make out nothing to show me where to work.

   On December 13, Maritime-liveried 66051 powers out of the early morning gloom with three repatriated Class 66s, on the 0809 Dollands Moor Sidings-Scunthorpe Redbourne Siding.

2. 2

   A depressing, despondent, or melancholic atmosphere.

   A sudden little river crossed my path / As unexpected as a serpent comes. / No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms— / This, as it frothed by, might have been a bath / For the fiend's glowing hoof—to see the wrath / Of its black eddy bespate with flakes and spumes.

   Although it's always crowded You still can find some room For broken-hearted lovers To cry there in their gloom.

3. 3

   Cloudiness or heaviness of mind; melancholy; aspect of sorrow; low spirits; dullness.

   A sullen gloom and furious disorder prevailed by fits.

4. 4

   A drying oven used in gunpowder manufacture.

verb

1. 1

   To be dark or gloomy.

   Here, while the proud their long drawn pomps diſplay, / There the black gibbet glooms beſide the way.

   Around all the dark forest gloomed.

2. 2

   To look or feel sad, sullen or despondent.

   Her face gathers, furrows, glooms; arching eyebrows wrinkle into horizontals, and a tinge of bitterness unsmooths the cheek and robs the lip of sweetened grace. She is evidently perturbed.

   Ciss was a big, dark-complexioned, pug-faced young woman who seemed to be glooming about something.

   "Is Maggie then astonishing too?"—and he gloomed out of his window.

   He gloomed for some moments above the round-topped table[.]

3. 3

   To render gloomy or dark; to obscure; to darken.

   A black yew gloom'd the stagnant air.

4. 4

   To fill with gloom; to make sad, dismal, or sullen.

   For see you not, dear love, / Such a mood as that, which lately gloom'd / Your fancy when you saw me following you, / Must make me fear still more you are not mine, […]

   Good Heaven! What ſorrows gloom'd that parting day, / That called them from their native walks away; […]

5. 5

   To shine or appear obscurely or imperfectly; to glimmer.

Forms

plural

glooms

past tense

gloomed

past participle

gloomed

present participle

glooming

third person singular

glooms