as in bleak
causing or marked by an atmosphere lacking in cheer
a dank and cheerless castle that was once the site of unspeakable horrors
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Example Sentences
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Recent Examples of cheerless
This episode is disappointingly cheerless overall—it’s not frosted, tinsely, glowing, silver with bells and mist, or snowy.
—
Jenny Singer, Glamour, 3 Nov. 2025
For three days, things were cheerless for Courtney Williams.
—Mike Cook, Twin Cities, 28 May 2025
Gomez gestured across the street toward 100 Centre Street—the criminal courthouse, a cheerless Art Deco building the color of cinder blocks.
—Sarah Lustbader, The New Yorker, 10 Mar. 2025
Election polls may seem cheerless, inscrutable, and wrapped in data and murky terminology.
—W. Joseph Campbell, Fortune, 29 Oct. 2024
Wedged between the cheerless skyscrapers of Third Avenue and an uncharming stretch of Second, just blocks north of the bro bars of Murray Hill, is a row of nine townhouses.
—Adriane Quinlan, Curbed, 2 Aug. 2024
Their lives had been expended in cheerless labor, there wills broken, their intelligences numbed.
—Jay Nordlinger, National Review, 5 July 2024
That turned an entertaining exhibition into an awkward and cheerless faux-competitive affair.
—Globe Staff, BostonGlobe.com, 19 July 2022
Recent Examples of Synonyms for cheerless
Adjective
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For two teens unable to use their legs, the future was especially bleak.—
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So what’s to be done when things look bleak?—
Adjective
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Gary is a lonely, unassuming postal worker who loves the Counting Crows.—
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Its 1959 Googie-style sign pierces the sky, a beacon of hope for weary road-trippers cruising this achingly lonely stretch of highway.—
Adjective
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Elmina, Ghana Africa's shores may be beautiful, but there's a somber history beyond the sun and sand.—
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The morning may feel more somber and reflective, yet by midday, the vibe smooths into something more cooperative and actionable.—
Adjective
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Police released an image captured from a surveillance video showing a person wearing dark clothes and a backpack, with their face covered.—
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But the late-Baroque facade of the building conceals a special, darker history, one that reflects persistent political and legal problems for the bank thousands of miles away, in the US.—
Adjective
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The aggression with which both parties have worked to manipulate district lines—while loudly inveighing against the other party for doing the exact same thing—is cynical and depressing.—
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The case exposed the depressing banality of it all—the man smiling politely at you at the bakery, only to rape your comatose body at night.—
Adjective
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Instead, adventurous beachgoers can check out the remains of hundreds of shipwrecks, lodged in the desolate sand.—
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Your character is a shape-shifting Ditto, and you’ve been dropped in a desolate landscape.—
Adjective
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Alcohol can make depressive symptoms even worse.—
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An acute spike in IL-6 following heat exposure appears to correlate with how much depressive symptoms improve.—
Adjective
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Comedian Chris Tucker added some levity to the solemn services with a stand-up set.—
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Also present for the solemn event were governors and senators from Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska and Florida.—
Cite this Entry
“Cheerless.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/cheerless. Accessed 12 Mar. 2026.
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