Definition
adjWithout color; pale; pallid.
adjDesolate and exposed; swept by cold winds.
Sentence Examples
The outlook is bleak.
The economic situation is very bleak.
The weather forecast for the upcoming weekend looks very bleak.
Word Origin & History
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”), 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”).
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"When she came out she looked as pale and as bleak as one that were laid out dead."
— 1563 March 30 (Gregorian calendar), John Foxe, Actes and Monuments of These Latter and Perillous Dayes, […], London: […] Iohn Day, […], →OCLC:
"Wastes too bleak to rear / The common growth of earth, the foodful ear."
— 1793, William Wordsworth, Descriptive Sketches:
"At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach, / A fisherman stood aghast, / To see the form of a maiden fair, / Lashed close to a drifting mast."
— 1840 January 10, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “[Ballads.] w:The Wreck of the Hesperus.”, in Ballads and Other Poems, 2nd edition, Cambridge, Mass.: […] John Owen, published 1842, →OCLC, stanza 20, page 47:
"But the bleakest Utopia of all, the very first of the Unutopias, had come from Wells long before that."
— 1978, The Spectator, volume 240, number 1, page 25:
"The industrial shitscape of Los Angeles gave way to something even bleaker as I passed out of lonely Riverside into the wide-open range of horse stables and twisted trees and spinning giant wind turbines outside of Indio."
— 2011, Jesse James, American Outlaw, page 331: