bleak

Pronunciation: /bliːk/

The English word “bleak” has 4 meanings listed here.

adjective

Without color; pale; pallid.
Desolate and exposed; swept by cold winds.
Unhappy; cheerless; miserable; emotionally desolate.

noun

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

Etymology

From Middle English bleke (also bleche, whence the English doublet bleach (“pale, bleak”)), and bleike (due to Old Norse), and earlier Middle English blak, blac (“pale, wan”), from Old English blǣc, blǣċ, blāc (“bleak, pale, pallid”) and Old Norse bleikr (“pale, whitish”), all from Proto-Germanic *blaikaz (“pale, shining”). Cognate with Dutch bleek (“pale, wan, pallid”), Low German blek (“pale”),…

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.