dreary

英 ['drɪərɪ] 美 ['drɪri]

解释

※ 提供单词"dreary"的中文意思、发音示范及音标对照，中英文词源、例句和用法等。

dreary 沉闷的

来自PIE*dhreu, 滴，掉落，词源同drip, drop. 原义为滴血的，引申义沉闷的，阴深的。

dreary: dreary: [OE] In Old English, dreary (or drēorig, as it then was) meant ‘dripping with blood, gory’, but its etymological connections are with ‘dripping, falling’ rather than with ‘blood’. It goes back to a West Germanic base *dreuz-, *drauz- which also produced Old English drēosna ‘drop, fall’, probably the ultimate source of drizzle [16] and drowsy.

The literal sense ‘bloody’ disappeared before the end of the Old English period in the face of successive metaphorical extensions: ‘dire, horrid’; ‘sad’ (echoed in the related German traurig ‘sad’); and, in the 17th century, the main modern sense ‘gloomy, dull’. Drear is a conscious archaism, created from dreary in the 17th century.
=> drizzle, drowsy
dreary (adj.): Old English dreorig "sad, sorrowful," originally "cruel, bloody, blood-stained," from dreor "gore, blood," from (ge)dreosan (past participle droren) "fall, decline, fail," from Proto-Germanic *dreuzas (cognates: Old Norse dreyrigr "gory, bloody," and more remotely, German traurig "sad, sorrowful"), from PIE root *dhreu- "to fall, flow, drip, droop" (see drip (v.)).

The word has lost its original sense of "dripping blood." Sense of "dismal, gloomy" first recorded 1667 in "Paradise Lost," but Old English had a related verb drysmian "become gloomy."

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2. The otherwise dreary book is enlivened by some very amusing illustrations.: 这本枯燥乏味的书幸亏加了一些精彩的插图才变得生动有趣.

4. So a dreary Monday afternoon in Walthamstow is nothing to write home about, right?: 这么说，在沃尔瑟姆斯托度过的一个沉闷的周一下午没什么值得大书特书的，是吗？

5. She was tired of hearing the same dreary tale of drunkenness and violence.: 她听够了那些关于酗酒和暴力的乏味故事.