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Dismally   /dˈɪzməli/   Listen
Dismally

adverb
1.
In a cheerless manner.  Synonym: drearily.
2.
In a dreadful manner.  Synonym: dreadfully.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Dismally" Quotes from Famous Books



... way, and then stopped and listened. He could hear the stream rumbling over the stones, but not another sound. Then the far-off howl of a wolf struck dismally on his ear. Twice it sounded and passed away, leaving the silence more intense, while all the time the air grew colder. All at once a dead branch snapped sharply. Estein looked round keenly, but in the dusk of the pine stems his eye could pick out nothing. For a minute everything ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston

... a close carriage was at the gate, well guarded. Mr Mayor and his green-eyed clerk took their seats with the prisoner: and the heavy vehicle rumbled dismally through the now deserted streets, wakening many a ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... conclude, observing the number of decayed pianofortes, guitars, and mandolines. The climate of Messina, he will further arene, must have been a wet one, inasmuch as there are umbrellas everywhere, standing upright among the debris, leaning all forlorn against the ruins, or peering dismally from under them. It rained much during those awful days, and umbrellas were at a premium. Yet fifty of them would not have purchased a loaf ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... a study. "Oh!" cried he dismally, "what wit! . . . give three rousing cheers!" . . . He mounted once more. "Well! there's no denying you are one hell ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall

... delight came from the various rooms where tryings-on were proceeding. "Every one seems happy but me," thought Judith dismally when ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett

... fitful early April wind howled dismally, swaying the leafless branches of the old elm, and causing them to rub complainingly against the gable end of the farmhouse. Two or three inches of fine snow had fallen the day before and the wind tossed it about gleefully, festooning the ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes

... only sister, who had been the wife of a rich English Jew. She had married an Englishman of high rank; but her husband, as well as her father and mother, was dead; all were dead; and she was living in widowhood and loneliness; and, ah! a great wrong had been done her! And here the Jew would sigh dismally and shake his head. ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... her unhappy plumpness it would be hard to reckon. She made no account of her satin skin, or her glossy black hair, or her lustrous violet eyes with their long, black lashes, or her flashing white teeth; she glanced dismally at her shape and scornfully at her features, good, honest, irregular American features, that might not satisfy a Greek critic, but suited each other and pleased her countrymen. And then she would sigh heavily ...
— Different Girls • Various

... under the lean-to and talked over their dilemma while the snow beyond the fire grew thicker, and the wind shrieked and howled dismally through ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace

... breakfast dismally, and blew through an empty pipe, staring lackadaisically out of the window at the wall of Sidney Sussex for two or three minutes before lighting up. Cambridge seemed an extraordinary flat and stupid place now that Frank was no longer within it. Really there was nothing particular ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson

... pacified and content again, and thought with something of pity of his brother dozing now no doubt before the parlour fire, cramped by his poor ideals and dismally happy ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson

... hardly worth the pains," she said dismally,—"the machine works badly, and the judges are neglectful. Only five cars to-day, and on every one only seven persons." "What!" cried Tison, "only thirty-five ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach

... world, having learned the lesson the Colorado is sure to teach those who regard it lightly. We made a portage at the place and enjoyed a good laugh when we looked at the vertical rocks and pictured the prospectors dismally crawling out of the roaring waters with nothing left but the clothes on their backs. Our opinion was, they were served just right: first, because they had stolen our property, and, second, because they had so little sense. The walls had rapidly grown in altitude, and near the river were vertical ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... them figures were moving like Indians, whose faces the flames lit up with ghastly distinctness. The neighboring wood was made visible and gloomy at once by the fires under the trees, the foliage reflecting the light dismally. Elsewhere all was in darkness, and we lay down to sleep wondering what the morrow would bring forth. Frederick City and home were forgotten, and the thoughts that now possessed us were of marching and counter-marching, of lines of battle, of reserves, of battery ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood

... groaned dismally, and her mother and sister, hearing the familiar sound, also groaned, so there was quite a chorus, and Kitty felt inclined to groan also, out ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume

... the little girl. "It was deep, though," and she began to cry, and when she tried to cover her eyes with her already well-soaked little apron, she felt quite broken-hearted and unnerved, and sat down dismally on the doorstep. ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... something white rolling over and over, and he shuddered; but it was only the carcase of a drowned sheep, one of several more which had probably been surrounded in some meadow and swept away. Directly after, lowing dismally, and swimming hard to save itself, a bullock came down rapidly, with its muzzle and a narrow line of backbone ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn

... by the window, the stormy sky, and ragged hurrying clouds without, the dusky chamber with all its dismally significant litter of medicine-bottles, made a gloomy picture—a picture which the man who looked upon it carried in his mind for many years ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... by degrees admitted that he had mentioned the engagement to this acquaintance and to that, till she perceived that in his restlessness and pride he had published it everywhere. She went dismally away to a bower of laurel at the top of the ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... mouth silenced her and set the boy wailing dismally. The boy was accustomed to howl without provocation. He kicked his mother until she let him down. By this time they could discern only Maurie's head bobbing in the distant water. Presently he clambered up the dock and ran dripping toward the city, ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne

... in Anjou. For there was not only the false arrest of Angelot; there were also certain dealings with the Prefect's secretary; there were tamperings with papers and seals, all to set forward that marriage affair that had failed so dismally, he hardly understood how. But he had hoped that the Prefect would die, and the news of his rapid recovery seemed strangely inopportune. It appeared to Simon that General Ratoneau's star was on the wane; and so, for those entangled in his rascally deeds, a lucky ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price

... escorted back through the lines, and at once made their report at headquarters. The festival had been dismally interrupted before it was well begun. The vessels were soon observed by friend and foe making their way triumphantly up to the town where they soon dropped anchor at the wharf of the inner Gullet, having only a couple of sailors wounded, despite all the furious discharges of Bucquoy's ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... sir," said Bones dismally; "give me a dangerous mission, one of those jolly old adventures where a feller takes his life in one hand, his revolver in the other, but don't ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace

... valley the coyotes called dismally, with that infinite shrill sadness of wild things that hunger, and in their wailing pulsed the eternal and unanswerable "Why?" challenging the peaceful stars. Something in their questioning cry impelled Louise to lift her hands ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... not at all; he'll make her two or three fine speeches, and then she'll be perfectly contented especially if he looks as dismally at her as he does at us! and that probably he will do the more readily for not liking to look at her at all. But she's such a romantic little thing, she'll ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... took baby, or seemed to, and Polly really did. Now, baby was heavy, and cross with its teeth; and Polly didn't feel like tending it one bit. Mamma hurried away to the kitchen; and Polly walked up and down the room with poor baby hanging over her arm, crying dismally, with a pin in its back, a wet bib under its chin, and nothing cold and hard to bite with its hot, aching gums, where the little teeth were trying ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott

... continued without a break all the morning. The two teams, after hanging about dismally, and whiling the time away with stump-cricket in the changing-rooms, lunched in the pavilion at one o'clock. After which the M.C.C. captain, approaching Adair, moved that this merry meeting be considered off and himself ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse

... other and shook it, and moaned dismally, like a great girl; but suddenly looking up he saw a half grin upon the faces ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... far been exceedingly pleasant, and on many a night when the driving rain was beating upon roof and window, and the wind was howling dismally around our solitary cabin, all has seemed bright and cheerful within, as Max and Morton carried on a spirited debate, or Browne declaimed Wolsey's soliloquy, or "To be, or not to be, that ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer

... Rachel, dismally. "Anybody might know by the noise who it is. He always comes stamping along as if he was paid for makin' a noise. Anybody ought to have a cast-iron head that lives anywhere ...
— Jack's Ward • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... is certain, I am much worse off now than I was when in the hands of Lew Flapp's crowd," thought Dick dismally, after trying in vain to break the ...
— The Rover Boys in Camp - or, The Rivals of Pine Island • Edward Stratemeyer

... viaticum to any late penitent in his agony. In the tall towers by the wayside the bells hung mute; no hands to ring them or none to answer to their call Meanwhile, across the lonely fields, toiling dismally, and ofttimes missing the track— for who should guide them or show the path?—parson and monk and trembling nun made the best of their way to Norwich; their errand to seek admission to the vacant preferment. Think of ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp

... he begged, hurt by the sight of the fair head bowed so dismally over the old doll. "I know how it would knock me out to have to stop now, just when I've got into the swing of things, so I know just how you feel. ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston

... up so thick and black that to Paul it seemed like a great sable curtain dropping its folds over them. It enveloped the forest, then the clearing, then the hut, and those within it. The inky sky was without a star. The puffs of rain rattled dismally on the roof of the old cabin. But all this somberness of nature brought comfort and lightness of heart to the besieged. Paul's spirits rose with the blackness of the night and the ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler

... too, for above forty years together, am I to make up the number of your dunces, because I have not the equal talent of making them cry too? Make it your own case. Is what you have excelled in at all the worse for your having so dismally dabbled in the farce of Three Hours after Marriage? What mighty reason will the world have to laugh at my weakness in tragedy, more than at yours ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... same day that Ena began to sneeze so dismally that the only place for her was bed. And when she could leave its seclusion the next only place was Palm Beach. She said she would die unless she could go to Palm Beach, so mother took her, and Peter took them both, not to ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson

... break thee in pieces!" and they came into the meeting-house, in spite of the fierce tithingman, and sat down in other people's seats with their hats on their heads, in ash-covered coats, rocking to and fro and groaning dismally, as if in a mournful obsession. Quaker women managed to obtain admission to the churches, and they jumped up in the quiet Puritan assemblies screaming out, "Parson! thou art an old fool," and, "Parson! thy sermon is too long," and, ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle

... I tell you?" groaned Peggy dismally. "Who looks better now, you or I? I look 'beautiful,' don't I, perfectly beautiful! It's so becoming to have no collar band, and one's arms sticking out like flails! I sha'n't be able to eat a bite. It's as much as I can do to sit still, much less move about. I'll put on a fichu, and then I can ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey

... now at the edge of the pit, and finished the rude burial which was all that could in those days be given to the dead. Every now and then one of the men would aim a heavy stone at the poor dog, who sat on the edge of the pit howling dismally. The creature, however, was never hit, for he kept a respectful distance from ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green

... has not received such a blow from an enemy, nor anything approaching it, since Buckingham's Expedition to the Isle of Rhe. Walcheren destroyed us by climate; and Corunna, with all its losses, had much of glory. But here we are dismally injured by mere Barbarians, in a War on our part shamefully unjust as well as foolish: a combination of disgrace and calamity that would have shocked Augustus even more than the defeat of Varus. One of the four officers with Macnaghten was George Lawrence, a brother-in-law of Nat ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... the night, and stillness outside—the stillness that whispers of death. Wolves crept up to the plot of land, sat on their hind-legs and howled long and dismally at the sky. ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak

... had been deaf. She and I alone all in the land, I fancy, could see his very real beauty. He was very good-looking, and most graceful in his bearing, with that something wild as of a woodland creature in his aspect. Her mother moaned over her dismally whenever the girl came to see her on her day out. The father was surly, but pretended not to know; and Mrs. Finn once told her plainly that 'this man, my dear, will do you some harm some day yet.' And ...
— Amy Foster • Joseph Conrad

... Mr. Johnson dismally, and rose to open the filing case behind him. With his hand in the case he paused and turned a most woebegone countenance to the junior Burnit. "We shall be very regretful, Mr. Applerod and myself, to lose our positions, sir," he stated. ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester

... hollow-sounding bittern guards its nest". 'Of all those sounds,' says Goldsmith, speaking of the cries of waterfowl, 'there is none so dismally hollow as the booming of the bittern.' ...'I remember in the place where I was a boy with what terror this bird's note affected the whole village; they considered it as the presage of some sad event; and generally found or made one to succeed it.' ('Animated ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith

... out—that these two smart Parisian lasses, having a fortnight before them, had determined to give up their places, and play the mascarade which I have described. When M. and Madame de Mourairef, two respectable, middle-aged people, arrived, they were dismally made acquainted with the sacrilege that had been committed; but as no debts had been contracted in their name, and their letters came in a parcel by the post from Orleans, they laughed heartily at the joke, and enjoyed the idea that Sophie had been ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various

... clamouring soul as dismally as the raindrops of your childhood fell upon the window-pane when you were waiting ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest

... it best as it wur afore." As he spoke the head disappeared, and they heard him go clumping down the ladder again. The words fell heavily on Lilac's ears. "Best as it wur afore." Perhaps everyone would think so too. She looked dismally first at the locks of hair on the ground and then at ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton

... intervals when they were not submerged, I essayed the side-board of my bunk like a gymnast, captured my careering slippers, and shuddered as I thrust my bare feet into their chill sogginess. I did not wait to dress. Merely in pyjamas I headed for the poop, Possum wailing dismally at ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London

... blare up. All this is ominous. All our animals are setting up a frightful howl, gazing towards the sun. The crows are perching on our banners. All this is ominous. Yon vultures and kites on our right portend a great danger. That jackal also, running through our ranks, waileth dismally. Lo, it hath escaped unstruck. All this portends a heavy calamity. The bristles also of ye all are on their ends. Surely, this forebodes a great destruction of Kshatriyas in battle. Things endued with light are all pale; beasts and birds look fierce; and there are to be witnessed many terrific portents ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... be wrong in his case," she declared, shaking her head dismally—"They know the symptoms, and they can only avert the end for a time. I'm very thankful Dr. Brayle was able to come with ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli

... times when the surgeon was cutting and hacking. Oh, I can't believe it! Oh, please say you are joking—that you wanted to give me a fright. And you have a mother?" She came over near the bed again and stood looking at him dismally, half in doubt, half in perplexed wonder; for Yankee, in her mind, suggested some such monster as the Greeks conjured when the Goths poured into the peninsula, maiming the men and debauching the women. "I said Sprague wasn't a Virginia ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan

... the girl asserted dismally. "I'm afraid you will—put me—in a cell!" Her voice sank to a murmur hardly audible as she spoke the words so fraught with dread import to ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana

... dismally. "That's the worst of it. He called me a swindler, said he'd show that you and I were in a conspiracy, and dared me to send him a bill. And in the circumstances I ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips

... and obscurity. In the beginning, this was a gladdening prospect to her; her high spirits and bounding enthusiasm sped onward into the future, and filled it with images of love in a state of beatitude; but as time advanced, and the dreary sea fell dismally on her ears, and the long walks on the beach had lost their freshness, and there was nothing to be read in each others' faces, which had not been read there ten thousand times over—except, perhaps, an increasing look of care and anxiety—this prospect of settling down, alone, away ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various

... shows Melancholy dismally punished in Purgatory; though his own interior gaiety—of which a word by and by—is so interior, and its outward aspect often so grim, that he is vulgarly considered to have himself been a sinner in this sort. Good art is nothing ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan

... To dinner, I suppose," said the doctor dismally. "Potatoes and damper! Oh, boys, I did think you would have had ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn

... Chazelle [dismally]. "Disgusting business! I don't see why we should be treated like slaves because the government gives us four francs and ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac

... little sharp pang of disappointment because I missed the face that I wanted to see. However, the man stooped over me, kindly enough, and lifted off the mattress and did his best to make me comfortable; only when I asked him where the doctor was he pretty dismally shook his head. ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier

... flat, unprofitable, the whole thing. At first, to be besieged and bombarded was a thrill; then it was a joke; now it is nothing but a weary, weary, weary bore. We do nothing but eat and drink and sleep—just exist dismally. We have forgotten when the siege began; and now we are beginning not to care ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens

... magic lyre who sent the rhetoric and botany waltzing through her brain; and when the fierce cry of "Lights out!" hurried Jane Eyre under the pillow, it was no dream of impossible mustaches that made her hear the clocks chime dismally and ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong

... Oswald, dismally repentant, handed Castel Forte a letter to Corinne in which he begged permission to see her. In answer she declined the permission, but asked to see his wife ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... were placed in flat bottomed boats, which silently dropped down the current. It was intended to land three miles above Cape Diamond, and then ascend to the high grounds above. The current, however, carried the boats down to within a mile and a half of the city. The night was dismally dark, the bank seemed more than ordinarily steep and lofty, and the French were on the qui vive. A sentinel bawled out, "Que vive," who goes there? "La France," was the quick reply. Captain Macdonald, of the 78th Highlanders, had served in Holland, ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger

... male and had a good coat—a rather unusual thing for a dingo, as the skin is often covered with sores. From that time, till we broke up camp, we were not often troubled by their howling near us—a gun shot would quickly silence their dismally infernal howls. ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke

... young man so excitedly, that he stopped short for an instant, in the middle of the dismally lashing rain, and looked at her with a gleam of delight in his blue eyes. "I thought so, I saw it at the first glance. You have a sister among the ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler

... thought of the island failed to charm. Philip straggled away to the window and looked out dismally at the soaked lawn and the dripping laburnum trees, and the row of raindrops hanging fat and ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit

... enforce them by compulsion of arms or any other method they might think fit. This precious document was signed on September 28, 1499 just twelve months after the agreement which it was intended to replace; and the Admiral, sailing dismally back to San Domingo, ruefully pondered on the fruits of a year's delay. Even then he was trying to make excuses for himself, such as he made afterwards to the Sovereigns when he tried to explain that this ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young

... sitting down on the opposite side of the hearth, while the fire, on which Hemstead had thrown some damp green wood, smoked dismally between them, "I do think you are ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... made, the one her last, the other his first appearance on the public stage of that unhappy country. On the 30th of May the ashes of Joan of Arc were thrown into the Seine, and on the 2nd of December our Henry Sixth made his Joyous Entry dismally enough into disaffected and depopulating Paris. Sword and fire still ravaged the open country. On a single April Saturday twelve hundred persons, besides children, made their escape out of the starving capital. The hangman, as is not uninteresting to note in connection with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... to Grenoble in the rain, passing through villages where the posters bearing his name and those of his friends, half-demolished by the rain, flapped dismally in the wind. Before the mayor's office, little groups were gathered, peaceful folk; a gendarme paced slowly to and fro, and bulletins littered the muddy thoroughfare. But there was no excitement. Nothing more. Not even a quickened pulse-beat was felt by those stolid ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie

... Tafelkop, and our limbs became stiffened with the cold, some of us went to an outhouse belonging to a neighbouring farm to seek shelter. During the day we sat there in our wet clothes staring dismally out into the rain. At night we tried to warm our naked bodies by covering ourselves with the dirty wool that happened to be lying there. All the outhouses in the neighbourhood were crowded with armed burghers in tatters. On the eighth day, when the welcome sun made ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo

... And that'll make more upset. Then you may come up here, Dave," he promised. But when Polly was made acquainted with this fine plan, she refused to allow Phronsie to enter into such a noisy play. And Joel's face dropped so dismally that she was at her wits' end to know how to straighten out the trouble. Just then one of the Henderson boys came up to the door with a little pat of butter in a dish for ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney

... they are what is called hopeless, and they use their poor bodies very ill. In their last stages on earth they are often very deplorable objects, slinking into public-houses, plodding raggedly and dismally along highroads, suffering cruelly and complaining little, conscious that they are universally reprobated, and not exactly knowing why. They are the victims of society; they do its dirty work, and are cast away as offscourings. They are really youthful and often ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson

... air, away, away, to the land of mists and dead people. And the poor sounds he managed to make seemed to strike Collie as the most grievous thing of all this disastrous voyage, for he put back his head and howled dismally. So the Lad gave it up and took to praying again, sure that though Father and Aunt Kirsty and Peter Fiddle were far away, that God was near. He was wet and chilled through now, and was so exhausted that at last his ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith

... voracious cannibals, dragging the bodies of Captain Hill and the seamen from the beach toward some large fires, which they supposed were prepared for the occasion, yelling and howling at the same time most dismally. ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins

... which one played when Amiel occasionally walked and talked with some stray damsel in the colony. She had no real jealousy of the young ladyhood that at times intruded. But this was different; here she was out- ranked in HER OWN CLASS. In that lay the sting. She reflected dismally that this was only Tuesday and that Jennie was to stay ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... do confess the moisture of the air. The other contents of this room are a broken-bellied virginal, a couple of crippled velvet chairs, with two or three mildewed pictures of moldy ancestors, who look as dismally as if they came fresh from hell with all their brimstone about 'em. These are carefully set at the further corner: for the windows being everywhere broken, make it so convenient a place to dry poppies and mustard-seed in, that the room ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various

... when I first began, in expectation of brisk jigs and lively overtures, soon took themselves away upon hearing a strain ten times more sorrowful than that to which they were accustomed. I did not lament their departure, but played dismally on till our horses came round to the gate. We mounted, spurred back through the grove of pines which protect Valombrosa from intrusion, descended the steeps, and, gaining the plains, galloped in ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford

... I ever to get along in this world unless I watch out?" he said to himself dismally. "I suppose it will do no good to knock on the door. By the way the place is located, the sleeping-room must be upstairs in the rear, and I might pound till doomsday ...
— Richard Dare's Venture • Edward Stratemeyer

... some time in my bed, as if somebody had asked me the question, What was I a whore for now? It occurred naturally upon this inquiry, that at first I yielded to the importunity of my circumstances, the misery of which the devil dismally aggravated, to draw me to comply; for I confess I had strong natural aversions to the crime at first, partly owing to a virtuous education, and partly to a sense of religion; but the devil, and that greater devil of poverty, prevailed; and the person who ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe

... will never forgive us," said Ismay, dismally. "I had a presentiment of trouble the moment that cat came ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... something in that," said Florence, brightening as she spoke. "I forgot when I spoke so dismally that you, too, were to spend the holidays here. By the way, ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade

... The black north wind!" shouted the steersman, and the sailors echoed his cry dismally, for they knew the terrors of that wind upon the Syrian coast. Then the gale began to rage. By daylight the waves were running high as mountains and the wind hissed through the rigging, driving them forward beneath a small sail. Nehushta crawled ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard

... are about all we can count on," he announced dismally. "There are only a half a dozen potatoes here. You ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon

... blade of grass beneath, his feet, tumbled off and gave vent to his feelings in a belated "chirr." Overhead somewhere a raven croaked dismally and cynically at intervals. Ralph's ears heard these things as he waited, with every sense on the alert, at ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett

... from the vocabulary of my eldest son, at which Josephine bridled for an instant, thinking that she had detected blasphemy. When it dawned upon her that the phrase in question was only one of those hybrid, meaningless objurgations, the use of which will scarcely justify a lecture, my darling gulped dismally and waited for me ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant

... his pajamas as close as he could get to a slow-warming steam radiator, those curtailed sentences projected his mental self into a land of cold and snow and biting wind, where the cattle drifted dismally before the storm. Andy Green and Miguel Rapponi were riding slowly toward him on shuffling horses as bone-weary as their masters. Snow was packed in the wrinkles of the boys' clothing. Snow was packed in the manes and tails of the horses that moved with their ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower

... hope," said the lieutenant dismally. "I'm like poor old Gurr; they don't consider me fit for service in a crack ship; and when I make my report, and send in my despatches, and ask for an appointment, I shall be told I do my work too ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn

... You see with what promptitude I plunge into correspondence; but the truth is, I am condemned to a complete inaction, stagnate dismally, and love a letter. Yours, which would have been welcome at any ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... to A'tim the huge Wolf sat while his two Sons searched the opposite bank for the coming out of Shag. Soon a "Hi, yi—he, he, he-voh-ooh!" came floating dismally up the tortuous stretch of winding stream. "Come; they have found it," said ...
— The Outcasts • W. A. Fraser

... a door open and close softly on the floor above; then slippered feet came pat-patting down the stairs. The wild rattle of the bell suddenly stopped; a muffled voice could be heard protesting dismally against the din. But suddenly the vague complaint gave way ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre

... impatient for the fray; for they were tired of being hidden away up a little river, plagued by mosquitoes and gnats. The dark shades of the heavy forests were seldom brightened by a ray of sun. The stream was full of alligators, that lay lazily on the banks all day, and bellowed dismally all night. The chirp of a bird was rarely heard. In its place were the discordant screams of cranes, or hisses of the moccasins or cotton-mouths. When at last the carpenters' clatter had ceased, and the ram, ready for action, lay in the little river, the crew were mustered ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... along insisted that there was no necessity for looking forward to such an event. He wished to raise, purify, reform the Church in which Providence had placed him; utterly dissatisfied as he was with it, intellectually and morally, convinced more and more that it was wrong, dismally, fearfully wrong, it was his duty, he thought, to abide in it without looking to consequences; but it was also his duty to shake the faith of any one he could in its present claims and working, and to hold up an incomparably purer model of truth and holiness. That his purpose was what ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church

... beacon shines brightly through the persistent storm, with the keeper's neat little house and garden a hundred yards away. In the tree-tops, up a heavily-forested hill beyond, the wind moans right dismally. In this sheltered nook, we shall be but lulled to sleep with the ceaseless pelting of ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites

... a dreary and wet one, and, in contemplating the aspect from his bedroom window, Mr. Pickwick was attracted by a game cock in the stable yard, who, "deprived of every spark of his accustomed animation, balanced himself dismally on one leg in a corner." Then Mr. Pickwick discovered "a donkey, moping with drooping head under the narrow roof of an outhouse, who appeared from his meditative and miserable countenance to be contemplating suicide." In the breakfast-room there ...
— The Inns and Taverns of "Pickwick" - With Some Observations on their Other Associations • B.W. Matz

... said Roy, aloud; and then to himself, "Oh, what an awful fib." Then he wrinkled up his brows dismally, and began to think of old Ben polishing the armour and swords; but the next moment his face smoothed out stiffly, and he grew red in his efforts to keep from laughing aloud, for Master Pawson commenced jerking and snatching ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn

... negro-driver, a tattooed African, armed with a whip. All within the court swarmed the black bees of the hive,—the men with little clothing, the small children naked, the women decent. All had their little charcoal fires, with pots boiling over them; the rooms within looked dismally dark, close, and dirty; there are no windows, no air and light save through the ever-open door. The beds are sometimes partitioned off by a screen of dried palm-leaf, but I saw no better sleeping-privilege than a board with a blanket or coverlet. From this we turned to the nursery, where ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... dismally on its hinges! An overgrown drive thick with leaves. There was something about the place that struck a chill to both their hearts. They went up the deserted drive. The leaves deadened their footsteps. The daylight was almost gone. It was like ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie

... accounted for six, and ended by pommelling his brother into a red jelly. There was a week or more of this, during which the old King hunted like a madman all day and revelled in gloomy vices all night. Richard saw little of him and little of the lady of France. She, a pale shade, flitted dismally out when evoked by the King, dismally in again at a nod from him. Whenever she did appear Prince John hovered about, looking tormented; afterwards the pock-marked Cluniac might be heard lecturing her on theology and the soul's business in passionless ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett

... attempts, some involving individuals, others corporations and in early days even colonies, form about the most instructive and dramatic episodes in the history of American agriculture. All endeavors, it will be remembered, were failures, so dismally and pathetically complete that we are wont to think of the two hundred years from the first settlements in America to the introduction of the Isabella, a native grape, as time wasted in futile culture of a foreign fruit. The early efforts were far from wasted, however, for out of the tribulations ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick

... of his entreaties, he became desperate and made his escape from the boat. The clerk found him after a long search in one of the barracks; a circle of dragoons stood contemplating him as he lay on the floor, maudlin drunk and crying dismally. With the help of one of them the clerk pushed him on board, and our informant, who came down in the same boat, declares that he remained in great despondency during the whole passage. As we left St. Louis soon after his arrival, we ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... there cannot be absolute uniformity, there might and should be a far nearer approach to an equable temperature of a much higher range than the readings of most professing Christians give. There is, indeed, a dismally uniform arctic temperature in many of them. Their hearts are fixed, truly, but fixed on earth. Their frost is broken by no thaw, their tepid formalism interrupted by no disturbing enthusiasm. We do not now speak of these, but of those who have moments of illumination, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... carefully interdicted. The consequences of all this seclusion to a highly imaginative and totally unregulated mind, must have been much worse than putting me to sleep in the haunted room, for in that I had my counter-spell—and long use had almost endeared me to it and its grotesque carvings—but this dismally large school-room, generally so instinct with life, so superabounding in animation, was painfully fearful, even from the contrast. Twenty times in the evening, when the cold blast came creeping along the floor ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... dismally. "Me and Johnnie don't ask for nothin' better than to bask in each other's company; but our wives insists on keepin' up the manoeuvres of a war-dance the ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning

... see your outline," Henson said, dismally. "I don't feel quite so frightened now. I can hang on a bit longer, especially now I know assistance is at hand. At first I began to be afraid that I was a prisoner for the night. No; don't go. If I had a rope I should have the proper confidence to swarm up again. And ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White

... of San Miguel, and had flopped in, perhaps in search of the proverbial church mouse. It was afraid of the other intruders, and afraid of the match, so afraid that it flapped its wings and hooted dismally. It hooted three times, which, if it had been the witch fortune-teller, might really have meant something, though there was no time just then to think what. Nick was somewhat alarmed lest, in its anger and fear, ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... dancing came up from the Village as he crossed the dim courtyard toward the light that shone palely from Silvertip's window. As he entered the cabin the Swede, still nursing the broken head that kept him from participating in the Potlatch festivities, groaned dismally in greeting. ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby

... native manner when some unclean thing is at hand. The mothers snatch up their little ones and carry them hurriedly away, casting a look of hate and fear over their shoulders as they run. The children scream and yell, clutch their mothers' garments, or trip and fall, howling dismally the while, in their frantic efforts to fly his presence. He is Frankenstein's monster, yearning for love and fellowship with his kind, longing to feel the hand of a friend in his, and yet knowing, by the unmistakable signs which a sight ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford

... which ducks and geese waddled, quacking, turkey-cocks fought in quiet corners, barked at impotently by Kabyle puppies. Tall, lean hounds or sloughis, kept to chase the desert gazelles, wandered near the kitchens, in the hope of bones, and camels gobbled dismally as their tired drivers forced them to their knees, or thrust handfuls of date stones down their throats. There were sheep, too, and goats; and even a cow, the "perpetual mother" ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... even love could say so much now. Their hair is long, unkempt, and strangely white; they make us shrink and shudder with an indefinable repulsion, though the effect may be from an illusory glozing of the light glimmering dismally through the unhealthy murk; or they may be enduring the tortures of hunger and thirst, not having had to eat or drink since their servant, the convict, was taken ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... what he conceived to be a very superior specimen of penmanship: in fact, the signature was by far the best he had ever written. When he had gone, Miss Quirk was twenty times on the point of tearing out the leaf which had been so dismally disfigured; but on her father coming home in the evening, he laughed heartily—"and as to tearing it out," said he, "let us first see which way the ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren

... and Mrs. James gone. Barrie was alone with her newly found—sister, and a more forlorn little figure than our young goddess it would be hard to imagine. Andromeda chained to her rock could not have looked more dismally deserted by her friends. A room had been taken for her, and she was now transformed into Miss Barribel Ballantree. "What a good thing I wouldn't let her be called Barbara after me," said Mrs. Bal. "We should have had ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... he once more pelted forward, Matcham trailing in the rear. To say truth, they made but poor speed of it by now, labouring dismally as they ran, and catching for their breath like fish. Matcham had a cruel stitch, and his head swam; and as for Dick, his knees were like lead. But they kept up the form of running ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... growled the sailor. That sailor told a great untruth, for when for the third time Roberts drove the trident he failed dismally, for in his excitement and hurry he took no care to hold the three-pronged fork so that it should strike the fish across the back, so that one or the other tooth should be driven into the flesh, but held it so that the blades were parallel with the fish's side, ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn

... yellow look whiter, and some endeavouring to crack the mirror; and after all the pains to color and adorn, upon seeing their faces far uglier than the devils', they would tear away with tooth and nail all the false coloring, the spots, the skin and the flesh all at once, and would shriek most dismally. "Accursed be my father," said one, "it was he who forced me when a girl to wed an old shrivelling, and it was his kindling my desires with no power to satiate them, that doomed me to this place." "A thousand curses on my parents," ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne

... dismally and began pulling his boots on again, stamping his swollen feet into them with grunts of pain. She put on his coat and one of the boy's caps, and they went out to the granary. The night was ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland

... man were both condemned to death (which is the most formidable thing Mr. Hobbes can conceive)"—and Dr. Eachard rallies him on the infinite anxiety he bestowed on his body, and thinks that "he had better compound to be kicked and beaten twice a day, than to be so dismally tortured about an old rotten carcase." Death was perhaps the only subject about ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... the maiden whom yesterday he proposed to make happy forever, but to-day to blight with regret like a "worm i' the bud." He already had a vague presentiment that such a role would often mortify his tastes and inclinations most dismally; and yet, what had he henceforth to do with pleasure? But if, after he had practiced the austerity of an anchorite, she should forget him, marry another, and be happy! The thought was excruciating. O, that awful "another"! He is the ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

... dismally as he reviewed these conclusions; he could do nothing, and must serve, or seem to serve, the villain humor of Storri. What were those two demands? Storri must meet Dorothy; and Richard must not. There was no help; Mr. Harley, in his present stress, would see Dorothy ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... am sent home, what will mamma and papa say?" he thought dismally. He had never yet been sent home for misconduct, and the very idea filled him with ...
— The Bobbsey Twins - Or, Merry Days Indoors and Out • Laura Lee Hope

... was silent, save when the rude blast Howl'd dismally round the old pile; Over weed-cover'd fragments still fearless she past, And arrived in the innermost ruin at last Where the elder ...
— Poems • Robert Southey

... to what seemed the end. Silently and dismally the half-dead forest, with its ghostly moss, lowered and darkened, and the black waters spread into a great silent lake of slimy ooze. The dead trunk of a fallen tree lay straight in front, torn and twisted, its top hidden yonder and mingled with ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois

... above him on a lonely branch, croaked dismally, till Andy fancied he could hear words of reproach in the sounds, while a little tomtit chattered and twittered on a neighbouring bough, as if he enjoyed and approved of all the severe things the raven uttered. The little tomtit ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover

... appearance of the house had changed. It was not only that winter had stripped the elm, and blackened the flower-borders: the house itself had a debased and deserted air. The window-panes were cracked and dirty, and one or two shutters swung dismally on loosened hinges. ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton

... bad, O'Brien," said another scribe mournfully. "Forgive him, Senator. I will have something to say to him later." Withering glances were cast at the unlucky one, who seemed about to sink under the table, and the wind outside howled dismally, and rattled ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald

... at last, a dismally tragic figure, his young face distorted and reddened, his sleek hair ruffled from the back into unsightly perpendicularities (an invariable sign of distracted emotion) and his hands appealingly outstretched—"what the hell am I going ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke

... could meet on a week's journey, and yet by an infelicity all class pictures are taken on its steps. Freshman courses are given in the basement—a French class once in particular. Sometimes, when we were sunk dismally in the irregular verbs, bootblacks and old-clothes men stopped on the street and grinned down on us. And all the dreary hour, as we sweated with translation, above us on the pavement the feet and happy legs of the enfranchised ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks

... The wind howled dismally about the crenellated turrets; and a row of poplars, standing like black, phantasmal guardians of the evil place, bent groaning before its fury. From the running waters of the moat, swollen by recent rains, came a gurgling sound ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini

... shower, which had passed over St. Ange in the late afternoon, had changed the sultry heat to ominous chill. The wind among the pines sobbed dismally as if it were a human ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock

... in the restaurant at which very good food is obtainable is the Pera Palace; but the hundreds of dogs that are allowed to infest the city for scavenging purposes, and who disgracefully neglect their business in order to bark and howl dismally all night, would ruin the best hotel in creation. Therefore, if in the summer, I should advise any man to go to the Summer Palace Hotel at Therapia, a few miles from the city, on the Bosphorus, which is perfectly delightful, and to run into Constantinople by ...
— The Gourmet's Guide to Europe • Algernon Bastard

... some water we might bring him to," observed Paul, when the man on the floor groaned again, more dismally than before. ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren

... true that it didn't take long to be forgotten. He had been finding that out rather dismally of late, finding out also that a good many things Frances had told him about himself were true. Her eyes could be so soft and lovely and appealing; they were wonderful eyes, but they could blaze as well. And she was right. He was selfish and conventional and intolerant. That is, he had been. ...
— How It Happened • Kate Langley Bosher



Words linked to "Dismally" :   drearily, dreadfully, dismal



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