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
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
For all his gloom, Mann was not entirely cheerless.
—Los Angeles Times, 29 July 2021
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
For all his gloom, Mann was not entirely cheerless.
—Los Angeles Times, 29 July 2021
Recent Examples of Synonyms for cheerless
Adjective
-
Matters only got more bleak in the sixth, when Rushing fouled a ball off his right shin, smoking a ball right above where his guard ended and immediately going down in pain.—
Fabian Ardaya,
New York Times,
6 Sep. 2025
-
The one constant is the unhappy couple’s bleak surroundings.—
Adam Solomons,
IndieWire,
5 Sep. 2025
Adjective
-
Tour can be lonely, even when you’re surrounded by people.—
Kim Gordon,
Rolling Stone,
3 Sep. 2025
-
But without the necessary business acumen in their teams, these technology leaders fight lonely battles.—
Alex Brueckmann,
Forbes.com,
3 Sep. 2025
Adjective
-
Chapple, the late Queen’s beekeeper, went first to Clarence House and then Buckingham Palace to perform his somber duty of telling the bees, a centuries-old custom of informing the bees when their owner has died.—
Elizabeth Bass Parman,
PEOPLE,
7 Sep. 2025
-
News voices in the 1970's tended to be somber, accent-less, and almost exclusively male.—
Scott Simon,
NPR,
6 Sep. 2025
Adjective
-
Kraus also had a dark backpack on her person.—
Amaris Encinas,
USA Today,
3 Sep. 2025
-
Lakshmi shared a photo and video of herself at the beach wearing a dark pink bikini while playing in the water.—
Angel Saunders,
People.com,
3 Sep. 2025
Adjective
-
Compelling, sure, but more depressing than funny.—
Fran Hoepfner,
Vulture,
5 Sep. 2025
-
The news is depressing, and now the Tribune is ignoring what is, for those who are not sports fans, their leading form of entertainment.—
Chicago Tribune,
Chicago Tribune,
1 Sep. 2025
Adjective
-
The first fires tore across humble, pioneering patches of plant life no taller than your ankle, as well as burning through rather more astonishing, and truly bizarre, 25-foot columns of fungus that briefly held sway on this desolate world before trees.—
Peter Brannen,
Big Think,
28 Aug. 2025
-
Restaurants provided a beacon of hope at a time when the landscape was desolate.—
Beth D'Addono,
Southern Living,
28 Aug. 2025
Adjective
-
In women at risk of postpartum depression, changes in peripartum levels of the neurosteroid have been associated with depressive symptoms.—
Alyssa Goldberg,
USA Today,
3 Sep. 2025
-
It is largely characterized by manic episodes (periods of elation and hyperactivity), which are then followed by depressive episodes (sadness and depression).—
Cara Lynn Shultz,
People.com,
2 Sep. 2025
Adjective
-
Dude can’t carry the Rams to the postseason again all by his lonesome.—
Sean Keeler,
Denver Post,
19 Aug. 2025
-
Dylan took the exit on the county line and pulled into the lonesome border truck stop, pissed in the bathroom, paid for Bob’s coffee with cream and with sugar and took out three hundred dollars at the ATM.—
Literary Hub,
Literary Hub,
13 Aug. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Cheerless.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/cheerless. Accessed 9 Sep. 2025.
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