mirthless

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 mirthless Writing, too, is mirthless and effortful. Moira Donegan, New Yorker, 26 Mar. 2025 Why is this one mirthless and artless? Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune, 29 Jan. 2025 Yet there was a mirthless response from those around him; a realisation there was an element of truth to his chant. Roshane Thomas, The Athletic, 30 Dec. 2024 His mirthless laugh might have suggested Kafkaesque persecution, or Hardyesque inexorability of fate. Tad Friend, The New Yorker, 21 Oct. 2024 Yet there was a mirthless response from those around him; a realisation there was an element of truth to his chant. Roshane Thomas, The Athletic, 30 Dec. 2024 His mirthless laugh might have suggested Kafkaesque persecution, or Hardyesque inexorability of fate. Tad Friend, The New Yorker, 21 Oct. 2024 Susan Faludi Laugh-In On the joyful Kamala Harris and the mirthless Donald Trump Nathaniel Rich Silent Spring Why aren’t the candidates talking about climate change? Patricia J. Williams, The New York Review of Books, 18 Oct. 2024 Cheung, who has only one friend at work (Leo Chen), fields mirthless calls from his wife and daughter in Taiwan that are always about money, nothing else. Sheri Linden, The Hollywood Reporter, 19 May 2024
Recent Examples of Synonyms for mirthless
Adjective
  • While examples abound, the state’s woebegone bullet train project, its tortuous efforts to implement information technology and the financial and managerial meltdown of its unemployment insurance program are among the most egregious.
    Dan Walters, Mercury News, 26 Apr. 2025
  • Sunday, the Sox, who are now an impossibly bad 31-100, locked up the sixth triple-digit-loss season in their woebegone history with a 9-4 defeat at the hands of the Detroit Tigers.
    Jon Greenberg, The Athletic, 25 Aug. 2024
Adjective
  • 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
Adjective
  • The building directly across the street stands in sad disrepair, its windows smashed, swathed in graffiti, a front garage door hangs half-open.
    Eric Adler, Kansas City Star, 19 June 2025
  • Two screenshots from the video showing Ollie was a sad facial expression.
    Lucy Notarantonio, MSNBC Newsweek, 19 June 2025
Adjective
  • The lugubrious $190 million musical was a sad clown face on all fronts, cast into the dunk tank by critics and posting a D CinemaScore from audiences — the first comic-book title ever to earn such a low exit-poll grade.
    Chris Lee, Vulture, 7 Oct. 2024
  • In one lugubrious sequence in which various members of Willie’s children’s generation take part in a pickleball tournament, the young men attempt to trash-talk one another.
    Daniel D'Addario, Variety, 1 June 2025
Adjective
  • Based on the memoir of a real doctor, the stories and tribulations feel achingly real, and Whishaw's sly smile and tongue-in-cheek delivery keeps the depressing stories from becoming too morose.
    Kelly Lawler, USA Today, 8 May 2025
  • One of the season’s main stories has focused on Rick (played by Walton Goggins), a morose middle-aged man vacationing with his earnest, wide-eyed girlfriend, Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood).
    Hannah Giorgis, The Atlantic, 7 Apr. 2025
Adjective
  • This melancholic yet humorous duet about a newly sober man who forms an unexpected bond with his dentist was an audience favorite at the SXSW festival.
    Leo Barraclough, Variety, 25 June 2025
  • Where the original is melancholic and smooth, Wayne’s spin is mischievous.
    Pitchfork, Pitchfork, 6 June 2025
Adjective
  • In this evocative, melancholy tale, an Italian champion racer is tasked with driving a car from Italy into Russia.
    Bilge Ebiri, Vulture, 27 June 2025
  • The commercial, as many may recall, features a montage of animal clips set to the melancholy ballad.
    Marina Watts, People.com, 26 June 2025
Adjective
  • Yet people remain dejected about the economy, according to the University of Michigan’s Index of Consumer Sentiment.
    Josh Boak, Fortune, 11 Dec. 2023
  • Loneliness is on the rise in the American workforce and may be a major reason so many people feel dejected and uninspired at their desks.
    Kells McPhillips, Fortune Well, 16 Oct. 2023

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Cite this Entry

“Mirthless.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/mirthless. Accessed 2 Jul. 2025.

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