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as in sad
feeling unhappiness how can you be glum after such a great day?

Synonyms & Similar Words

Antonyms & Near Antonyms

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Synonym Chooser

How is the word glum different from other adjectives like it?

Some common synonyms of glum are crabbed, gloomy, morose, saturnine, sulky, sullen, and surly. While all these words mean "showing a forbidding or disagreeable mood," glum suggests a silent dispiritedness.

a glum candidate left to ponder a stunning defeat

When is crabbed a more appropriate choice than glum?

Although the words crabbed and glum have much in common, crabbed applies to a forbidding morose harshness of manner.

the school's notoriously crabbed headmaster

When can gloomy be used instead of glum?

In some situations, the words gloomy and glum are roughly equivalent. However, gloomy implies a depression in mood making for seeming sullenness or glumness.

a gloomy mood ushered in by bad news

How do morose and glum relate to one another?

Morose adds to glum an element of bitterness or misanthropy.

morose job seekers who are inured to rejection

When might saturnine be a better fit than glum?

While the synonyms saturnine and glum are close in meaning, saturnine describes a heavy forbidding aspect or suggests a bitter disposition.

a saturnine cynic always finding fault

When is it sensible to use sulky instead of glum?

The words sulky and glum can be used in similar contexts, but sulky suggests childish resentment expressed in peevish sullenness.

grew sulky after every spat

When would sullen be a good substitute for glum?

The meanings of sullen and glum largely overlap; however, sullen implies a silent ill humor and a refusal to be sociable.

remained sullen amid the festivities

When could surly be used to replace glum?

The synonyms surly and glum are sometimes interchangeable, but surly implies gruffness and sullenness of speech or manner.

a typical surly teenager

Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of glum By examining lots of logical reasoning examples, the aim is that the budding AI will mathematically and computationally glum onto how to best perform logical reasoning. Lance Eliot, Forbes, 10 Mar. 2025 Give me this version of Philadelphia mayhem over the glum Long Bright River or Dope Thief any day. Daniel Fienberg, HollywoodReporter, 8 May 2025 Sometimes they’re carried along on glum motorcycle rides, meandering downriver journeys, and great leaps forward in time. Justin Chang, New Yorker, 2 May 2025 After failing to win their third straight Super Bowl, things seemed a bit glum, but some decent moves have been made by the team so far. Thomas G. Moukawsher, Newsweek, 20 Mar. 2025 See All Example Sentences for glum
Recent Examples of Synonyms for glum
Adjective
  • The somewhat bleak outlook was laid bare Tuesday night after the USMNT was thrashed 4-0 by Switzerland during a friendly in Nashville.
    Ben Church, CNN Money, 11 June 2025
  • Instead of learning from this bleak recent history, Americans are now painfully absorbing this lesson by repeating it.
    Jonathan Haskel, Foreign Affairs, 10 June 2025
Adjective
  • To some, this may sound bizarre, laughable, or even just plain sad.
    Melissa Fleur Afshar, MSNBC Newsweek, 7 June 2025
  • Banks: There’s a reason why the theater [symbol] is a happy face/sad face.
    Lorraine Ali, Los Angeles Times, 7 June 2025
Adjective
  • The incident caused a somber scene near home plate, as Yankees teammates, coaches and personnel huddled around the always-affable 26-year-old before an ambulance took him off the field and to a nearby hospital.
    Gary Phillips, New York Daily News, 5 June 2025
  • The somber financial picture leaves the city caught between cutting services to the public and finding a way to raise money.
    Luis Melecio-Zambrano, Mercury News, 5 June 2025
Adjective
  • The results: enrollees had less financial stress and were less likely to be depressed, but there was no difference in their physical health.
    John C. Goodman, Forbes.com, 3 June 2025
  • Even at a time when film and TV production in Southern California is depressed, A-listers want to spend their time between takes in plush surroundings.
    William Earl, Variety, 27 May 2025
Adjective
  • Cass fulfills his obligations in a particularly irritable way.
    Jesse Hassenger, Vulture, 30 Apr. 2025
  • One person’s fatigue is another’s back pain, is another’s migraine or irritable bowel, or long Covid, and so on.
    Jessica DuLong, CNN Money, 11 Apr. 2025
Adjective
  • As found in the survey, adults who experience daily loneliness are nearly five times more likely to rate their current life poorly compared to those who aren’t lonely.
    Mark Travers, Forbes.com, 9 June 2025
  • Skeletal branches created a cathedral over the lonely vehicle where the 64-year-old man had breathed his last, the winter-gray river placid in the background behind a ramble of fences.
    Brenna Ehrlich, Rolling Stone, 8 June 2025
Adjective
  • Additionally, the more fiscally conservative Senate is increasingly unhappy with the cost of the bill, which is estimated to add $3.1 trillion to the deficit over the next decade.
    Kelly Phillips Erb, Forbes.com, 10 June 2025
  • Trump is unhappy with Musk’s outburst, but Republicans are downplaying the effect on their agenda bill Trump confirmed their relationship has soured, with Musk repeatedly blasting the president’s sweeping domestic agenda bill in recent days and a public fight on social media on Thursday.
    Matt Egan, CNN Money, 6 June 2025
Adjective
  • Flowers brighter than the rose bloomed in the blackest of the heath for her; out of a sullen hollow in a livid hillside her mind could make an Eden.
    Erik Pedersen, Oc Register, 6 June 2025
  • When this long, difficult, rewarding and validating Minnesota Timberwolves season came to a crashing halt Wednesday in Oklahoma City, a sullen group of players and coaches filed into the locker room to come to grips with it all.
    Jon Krawczynski, New York Times, 30 May 2025

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Cite this Entry

“Glum.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/glum. Accessed 19 Jun. 2025.

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