Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Bleak   /blik/   Listen
Bleak

adjective
1.
Offering little or no hope.  Synonyms: black, dim.  "Prospects were bleak" , "Life in the Aran Islands has always been bleak and difficult" , "Took a dim view of things"
2.
Providing no shelter or sustenance.  Synonyms: bare, barren, desolate, stark.  "Barren lands" , "The bleak treeless regions of the high Andes" , "The desolate surface of the moon" , "A stark landscape"
3.
Unpleasantly cold and damp.  Synonyms: cutting, raw.



Related search:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Bleak" Quotes from Famous Books



... far away, the winding track stood still upon the shore, where St. Michael of the Mount rebuked the dragon from his throne of rock above the seething sea. But what was the wanderer's guide along the bleak unpeopled surface of the Cornish moor? The ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... Falernian wine to the haughty victors, who stretched their huge limbs under the shade of plane trees, artificially disposed to exclude the scorching rays and to admit the genial warmth of the sun. These delights were enhanced by the memory of past hardships; the comparison of their native soil, the bleak and barren hills of Scythia, and the frozen banks of the Elbe and Danube added new charms to the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... on their route, struck them as "one of the most appalling objects" which they had seen, being a bleak rock twelve hundred feet high above the level of the lake, with a perpendicular face of its full height. The Indians say, that any one who can scale it, and "turn three times on the brink of its fearful wall, will live for ever." We presume, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various

... of the past years, it seemed to him that they had been very bleak and barren. True, he had done many things; he had influenced many people, and accomplished some good work; but what had he got out of it for himself? He was an Individualist at heart, as most men are, and he felt ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... It was bleak and drear. A raw, angry wind came out of the north and went raging through the woods, tearing the pretty clothing of the trees to pieces and rudely hurling the dust of the street in one's face. The sun got behind the clouds and in grief and dismay hid his face while ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington

... undertaken by the orders of one of His Majesty's naval officers, commanding on the southwest coast of America, it was soon ascertained that it was a most dangerous land to approach and to continue near. Its sterility and bleak and forbidding appearance, from all the accounts published respecting it, are scarcely equalled, certainly are not surpassed, in the most inhospitable countries near the North Pole; while ships are suddenly exposed to most violent storms, from which there ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson

... now reached a part of the road where the country assumed a totally different character; the woods and moors were no longer visible, but a broad and somewhat bleak extent of country lay before them. Here and there only a few solitary trees broke the uniformity of the wide fields and scanty hedgerows, and at distant intervals the thin spires of the scattered churches rose, like the prayers of which they were the symbols, ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... a bleak and cheerless landscape that lay before the travelers. The vast snow-covered plain stretched out before them, and, at their backs, was the desolate, black wilderness. Only the hope of gold kept ...
— The Young Treasure Hunter - or, Fred Stanley's Trip to Alaska • Frank V. Webster

... her myself, not only when she came to church, but when she was out on the hills with her son, whether taking a long, purpose-like walk, or—on special fine days—leisurely rambling over the moor or the bleak pasture-lands, surrounding the old hall, herself with a book in her hand, her son gambolling about her; and, on any of these occasions, when I caught sight of her in my solitary walks or rides, or while following my agricultural pursuits, I generally contrived ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte

... Satan blinded and urged on Did fling them headlong from a certain crag That up Clovelly way o'erhangs the sea— O'erhangs the sea to tempt unhappy folk. From door to door the piteous legend passed, And like a thrifty beggar took from each. And when the long autumnal season came To that bleak, bitter coast, and when at night The deep was shaken, and the pent cloud broke Crashing among the lurid hills of heaven, And in brief sudden swoonings of the gale Contentious voices rose from the sand-dunes, Then to low sobs and murmurs died away, The fishwives, with their lean ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... her voice. So, seeking asylum from the anxious ghosts that stalked between the walls of his house, he made his way down-town and rang the bell on Marcia Terroll's door. There are women men go to in triumph and women they go to when hurt. Often they are not the same women. It was a raw, bleak afternoon of disheartening drizzle and a reek of fog which veiled the tops of the taller buildings. As he waited for an answer to his ring, he could hear the fog-horn voice groaning over river and bay as though some huge monster were troubled ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... was as flat and as smooth as a billiard table, no rocks, no roll; and we chased a never-ending line of telegraph poles over a never-ending waste of sand. Another day we were traversing from dawn till sundown an evil-looking land strewn with boulders and ribs of rock, bleak, desolate, forbidding. ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall

... Descends the Arkansas. When the party reached the Arkansas late in October Wilkinson and three or four men journied down it and returned to the settled country. Wilkinson left on record his delight when he at last escaped from the bleak windswept plains and again reached the land where deer supplanted the buffalo and antelope and where the cottonwood was no longer the ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt

... home, and his victim, Little Emily; and to some extent Sam Weller, Dick Swiveller, the Marchioness, young Podsnap, the Artful Dodger, and Charley Bates; while Oliver Twist, Little Nell, and Little Dorrit, Joe and Turveydrop in Bleak House, and Paul Dombey, young as they were, show the beginning of the pubescent change. Most of his characters, however, are so overdrawn and caricatured as to be ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall

... then on! where duty leads my course be onward still,— O'er broad Hindostan's sultry meads, o'er bleak Almorah's hill. ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... that. Beside the fire, in the chair that had once belonged to the master of the house, sat Micah Ward. He looked very old now and infirm. The months in a prison hulk in Belfast Lough and the long weariness of his confinement in bleak Fort George had set their mark upon him. On his knees lay a Greek lexicon, but he was pursuing no word through its pages. It was open at the fly-leaf inside the cover. He was reading lovingly for the hundredth ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham

... every scene, every nook, she and her lover had immortalized in their memories; he would see it all, feel it all—yes, live it all, and become so impregnated with its witchery that it would shed lustre and glory upon all the bleak years to come. So well had she told her story, so perfect had been its word-painting, he was sure that he ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous

... alone in the attic which served her for a home in this bleak northern city, so far and so different from her own ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates

... and the castle of the Duke, its ruler, lay beside a lake that was bluer than the deepest indigo. A long time ago the Knight Wendelin and his squire George chanced upon this lake, but they found nothing save waste fields and bleak rocks around it, yet the shores must formerly have borne a different aspect, for there were shattered columns and broken-nosed statues lying on the ground. Against the hillside there were remains of ancient walls that once, undoubtedly, had supported terraces of vines, but the rains ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... Thames are more akin to the characteristics of Essex than of Kent. The hop gardens are dwarfed and stunted, and presently hops, corn, and pasture give place to fields of turnips, which show up like masses of jade on the chocolate-coloured soil. The bleak churchyard of Cooling, overgrown with nettles, lies amongst these desolate reaches, which resound at evening with the shrill, unearthly notes of sea-gulls, plovers, and herons. Beyond the churchyard are the marshes, "a dark, flat wilderness", ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin

... field; Mail'd for the arrow and the lance, Bore not unharm'd my smiling glance; At other times collected, brave, Recoiled when I that picture gave; As if their inmost heart, laid bare, Shrank from the bleak, ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham

... dispersed; a rough bleak wind freezes the moisture in the atmosphere, and the moon rose in cloudless majesty in the heavens. It was a cold, clear December night, and the wet clothes of the fugitives were frozen stiff, like a harness, ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach

... gloom the ruined castle loomed darkly, a ghastly monument of evil deeds. I looked about for the madman but saw him not. The weirdness of the place, the horror of its secret, crept into my blood. I became afraid. Down the bleak road I picked my way, glancing fearsomely over my shoulder. I fain would have fled as had ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson

... the truth which I am fur from not wantin' to do, I should say that at first sight, it wuz rather of a bleak, lonesome lookin' spot, kinder wild and desolate lookin'. But as we went further along in it, we came to some little nooks and sheltered paths and spots, that seemed more collected together and pleasant. There ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley

... cold, bleak one, too—Father Foley, a popular and genial priest, on his way from a distant visitation, dropped in to see Widow O'Brien, who was as jolly as himself, and equally as fond of the creature comforts, and, what ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger

... Thine indefeasible investiture, And that right round thy locks are native to; The heavens upon thy brow imperial, This huge terrene thy ball, And o'er thy shoulders thrown wide air's depending pall. What if thine earth be blear and bleak of hue? Still, still the skies are sweet! Still, Season, still thou hast thy triumphs there! How have I, unaware, Forgetful of my strain inaugural, Cleft the great rondure of thy reign complete, Yielding ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson

... Venice was a bleak and empty setting, the jewel gone. How vacant it looked, how vacant it was! We made not any effort to penetrate the galleries; I had no heart to urge my friend. For us the whole of Venice had become ...
— The Beautiful Lady • Booth Tarkington

... encampment on Mud Island on the 10th Septr. 1804 haveing made 22 miles only to Day. Saw Several Indians on the hills at a distance this evening viewing us. our encampment of this evening was a very disagreable one, bleak exposed to the winds, and the Sand wet. I pitched on this Situation to prevent being disturbed by those Scioux in the Course of the night as well as to avoid the Musquetors-. Killed 9 ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... married life, I on my sea-enterprise. If ever I cherished an ill-feeling for Miss Mamie, I forgave her now; so brave and kind, so pretty and venturesome, was her decision. The weather frowned overhead with a leaden sky, and San Francisco had never (in all my experience) looked so bleak and gaunt, and shoddy, and crazy, like a city prematurely old; but through all my wanderings and errands to and fro, by the dock side or in the jostling street, among rude sounds and ugly ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... McDonald Islands Heard Island - 80% ice-covered, bleak and mountainous, dominated by a large massif (Big Ben) and an active volcano (Mawson Peak); McDonald Islands - ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... fields. It was on this side of the town that the local aristocracy lived. And who were the great people of this small town? Not the younger branches of the county families that held hereditary state in their manor-houses on the wild bleak moors, that shut in Monkshaven almost as effectually on the land side as ever the waters did on the sea-board. No; these old families kept aloof from the unsavoury yet adventurous trade which brought wealth to generation after generation ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell

... spring comes early, this April afternoon showed the land still naked and cold. On the coppices, dispirited catkins drooped their tassels from the wet branches of the undergrowth, but the young leaves lurked within their brown coverings as though they shivered at the thought of venturing out into the bleak air. On the oaks, dead leaves from the past autumn clung obstinately to their mother-branches. The hop-lands were a dreary drab; hop-poles huddled against one another for warmth; streams ran swollen ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg

... remembered that Augustine was waiting for her downstairs and that in little more than an hour her husband would be with her. And suddenly the agony lightened. A giddiness of relief came over her. He was kind: he did not judge her: he knew all, yet he respected her. Augustine was like the bleak, stony moor; she must shut her eyes and stumble on towards the firelight. And as she thought of that nearing brightness, of her husband's eyes, that never judged, never grew hard or fierce or remote from human tolerance, a strange repulsion from her son rose in her. ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

... by a rising swell; A story of weakness, shame, and wrong Mutely the frozen features tell. Noiseless falls on it, the tears of dew, Over it softly the breezes blow; Wavelets, kissing the tangled hair, Murmur a requiem sad and low. Out to the barren, bleak hillside Rough hands bear it with scorn and jest. Cradled once in a mother's arms— Once by a mother's fond lips pressed— Under the clods of a new-made grave; A rough-hewn board at the foot and head, Where never a flower of love ...
— Debris - Selections from Poems • Madge Morris

... long bleak road from Subiaco to Vicovaro, a violent dry wind against us, veiling all things in dust, a spring near Spiagge: a wide runnel of water spirting out of the travertine and running off into clear rills where the mules drink. The water they collect up here for the ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee

... them in his small bleak room, turned the lamp low, and opened the door of the diminutive wood-stove to let the firelight in the room. The three sat around it.... Peter Mowbray felt strange and young beside them. The woman seemed ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort

... added Bernard, "that I should think it little short of murderous to take that unlucky child from the one woman who understands her up into the bleak north at this ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... ancient commonwealth—his earliest associations were connected. A kind of rude equality still reigned in the manners of the rustic population, which was not likely to be disturbed by the influx of the world into a bleak and gloomy district remote from the great roads. Here young Niebuhr grew up a studious and solitary boy; instructed by his father in French, the rudiments of Latin, and above all, in geography and history, which the old traveller taught him to illustrate by maps and plans, and by ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various

... name of "New Scotland?" The picture would here be complete if it were set off with here and there a meagre and dried up highlander, without shoes, stockings or breeches, with a ragged plaid, a little blue flat bonnet, sitting on a bleak rock playing a bag-pipe, and singing the glories of a country that never was conquered! To finish the picture, you have only to imagine a dozen more ragged, raw-boned Scotchmen, sitting on the bare rocks around ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse

... toil and pleasure through the day of existence; then, fading, following the sinking sun, he goes down in death's night to the pallid populations of shade. Again: the fruitful bloom of summer is succeeded by the bleak nakedness of winter. So the streams of enterprise and joy that flowed full and free along their banks in maturity, overhung by blossoming trees, are shrivelled and frozen in the channels of age, and above their sepulchral ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... the vicinity of the spot where the mess tent had stood, the rest of the troop greeted their coming with a faint cheer. It takes a good deal to utterly discourage a bunch of healthy boys; and while things looked pretty bleak, still they made out to consider the adventure in the light of a joke. No one wished his companions to know just how badly frightened he ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren

... palace with its brilliant mosaic floors, its frescoed ceilings, and gorgeous ornaments, filled Ben with delight; he was surprised that some of the churches were so very plain—elaborate sometimes in external architecture but bare and bleak within with their ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge

... a haunter of the tree-clad valleys, of the prattling brooks with the meadowsweet drooping over them, and of the lone, bleak hills where the great ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce

... wakes up and assists the entire spiritual nature of individuals and communities, I think there is really more opportunity here than anywhere else on the face of the earth. And, as a sign and instrument of this, I would point to some District School-house; rough, weather-worn, standing in some bleak corner of New York or New Hampshire; through whose closed windows the passer-by catches the confused hum of recitation, or at whose door he sees children of all conditions mingling in motley play. Of all conditions, so far as external ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin

... them, then, to turn their attention to the land, which is their chief source of wealth. Let them buy it up, or gain it by long leases, inch by inch and acre by acre, until not only the bleak bogs and wild mountains of Connaught are again their own, but the rich meadow-lands and smiling wheat-fields of Munster and Leinster. Let their brethren in America and Australia associate with them in this, and thus will they build up again a true Irish yeomanry and nobility—for nobility has ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... sat and smoked and watched her every movement with keen, critical eyes. Were they not Spaniards who had danced all through their childhood and youth, as naturally as they breathed? About Gallito's mouth played the bleak smile which in him betokened content, while Jose could barely wait for her to finish her preliminary exercises before he besought her to let him join her. Even Mrs. Nitschkan laid down some fishing tackle with which she was engrossed and Mrs. ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

... reins, walked forward, hoping she wouldn't make him push around her. But apparently she read the determination in his face and stood aside, her expression bleak now. ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton

... jerked in his panting horse, nothing but the desert, still, hot, thirsty, a great tortured thing under the merciless sky. Nothing but long level stretches so bleak, so barren, that a jackrabbit could not have hidden his gaunt, gray body. Nothing as he looked with narrowing eye far to east and west, north and south, but a vast, silent monotone of plain that would seem to conceal nothing, as open ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory

... money-maker and the totals at the foot of the pages in the soiled yellow bankbook were the milestones that marked the progress he had already made. They told him that the daily struggles with Fatty, the long tramps through Caxton's streets on bleak winter evenings, and the never-ending Saturday nights when crowds filled the stores, the sidewalks, and the drinking places, and he worked among them tirelessly and persistently were not ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson

... morning, when I was fighting my way to school against the wind, I couldn't see anything but the road in front of me; but in the late afternoon, when I was coming home, the town looked bleak and desolate to me. The pale, cold light of the winter sunset did not beautify—it was like the light of truth itself. When the smoky clouds hung low in the west and the red sun went down behind them, leaving a pink flush on the snowy roofs and the blue ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather

... sea. On waves of balm A white sail of rare glow Came rounding to the harbor's calm With fullest promise—lo! Bleak winds arise, as false she cries, "A black ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various

... Miss Mann, "her colour is remarkably good: it is not subject to any variation like ours. The bleak sea air does not dim the roses on her cheeks; while these young ladies look as blue and as cold as figures carved out of stone. Of course, Miss Leigh will think me very uncharitable in saying that Mrs. D. paints; but I know she ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie

... gardens heavy-laden with golden fruit. Tall accacias a mass of canary colored bloom. Opulent palms shivering against a gray sky. Close mountains green and dense with forest trees, their crests filagreed with redwoods. Far mountains lifting their bleak ridges above bare brown ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton

... bleak hillside, the bleak hillside, he lay— Her lips were red, and red the stream that slipped his life away. Ah, crimson, crimson were her lips, but his were ...
— Fires of Driftwood • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

... bearing on him for the last few weeks! We should all be kindly and genial, if we had the same chance of being so. But if Dr. Longley had a living of a hundred pounds a year, a fretful, ailing wife, a number of half-fed and half-educated little children, a dirty, miserable house, a bleak country round, and a set of wrong-headed and insolent parishioners to keep straight, I venture to say he would have looked, and been, a very different man in that railway-carriage running up to London. Instead of the genial smiles that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various

... bodies. Animalcules have been found in the blood of the frog and the salmon; according to Nordmann, the fluids in the eyes of fishes are often filled with a worm that lives by suction (Diplostomum), while in the gills of the bleak the same observer has discovered a remarkable double aniimalcule (Diplozoon paradoxum), having a cross-shaped form with two heads and two ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt

... offered his arm as a support, but the prelate did not accept it. They arrived in this manner at the government house, Baisemeaux rubbing his hands and glancing at the horse from time to time, while Aramis was looking at the bleak bare walls. A tolerably handsome vestibule and a staircase of white stone led to the governor's apartments, who crossed the ante-chamber, the dining-room, where breakfast was being prepared, opened a small side door, and closeted himself ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... the princesses of his own kith, whose brown cheeks blush with the blood of ancient Pharaohs and who exult with Babbulkund in her surpassing beauty, and who know nought of the desert or the jungle or the bleak hills to the north. Quite unadorned and clad in simple garments go all the kith of Nehemoth, for they know well that he grows weary of pomp. Unadorned all save one, the Princess Linderith, who weareth Ong Zwarba and the three lesser gems of the sea. Such a stone is Ong Zwarba ...
— Selections from the Writings of Lord Dunsay • Lord Dunsany

... delighted, 'you could provide us with a few of these crows, we should really feel very much obliged to you; for we have a long and cold campaign before us among the bleak hills of Nepal; and we are all fond ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... hour or so of midnight, when they left the regular streets behind them, and entered on the deeper gloom of that neutral ground where the house was situated. The town lay in the distance, lurid and lowering; the bleak wind howled over the open space; all around was black, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... mile further on, another hill reared its bleak and barren head on the opposite side of the rivulet. Once fairly in the gorge, there was no exit save at the upper end of the ravine. Here, then, I must intercept my game, which I was able to do by taking a nearer cut over the ridge, that saved ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman

... the three assembled in the bleak drawing-room of the hotel. Frohman ordered a little supper of ham sandwiches and sarsaparilla, after which he rehearsed the love scene, which simply consisted of a tender little parting in a doorway. It served ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman

... her in his arms—she was very, very slight—and lifted her to his lips, and then, throwing one side of his own scanty coat about her and holding it there with an affectionate hug, he said, "Come, come, little daughter, it's too bleak for a little body like you to be out. It's cruel, cruel, but I dared not tell him it was so late. What does he know or care for my poor little ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various

... came, the twilight had faded out, and the little figure, too, had vanished, leaving that one breast desolate, save when a lightsome shadow flitted across its ever-verdant memory. The summer cottage looked dreary, with its closed blinds, and the autumn leaves rustling about it in the bleak winds; but the little tombstone still gleamed in the sunlight, that cast a pleasant and warm halo upon it, and the birds and squirrels sung and leaped about in the beauteous grove as blithesome ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith

... South African population enjoy incomes, material comforts, and health and educational standards equal to those of Western Europe. In contrast, most of the remaining population suffers from the poverty patterns of the Third World, including unemployment, lack of job skills, and bleak living conditions. The main strength of the economy lies in its rich mineral resources, which provide two-thirds of exports. Economic developments for the remainder of the 1990s will be driven largely by the new government's ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... In a bleak Lanarkshire factory village in the south of Scotland, Robert Owen, millowner, socialist and Welshman, found that unless he could provide for the education of the children of his factory hands, no parents would consent to settle in the district and he would be without ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith

... mountains, rivers, and such like natural eccentricities being left out of the count, is to describe fifty other West of Ireland towns. There is a railway-station, bleak, gray, and windswept, situated, for the benefit of local car-owners, a mile and a half from the town, and the road which connects the two is execrable. There is a workhouse, in Ballymoy as everywhere else in this lost land the most prominent ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham

... no sport early in the morning. It was a cold bleak February day, with occasional storms of sleet. We rode from cover to cover, but all in vain. "I am sorry, sir, that we are to have such a bad day, as you are a stranger here," said one gentleman to ...
— The O'Conors of Castle Conor from Tales from all Countries • Anthony Trollope

... living thing appeared in the limit of Shefford's vision. He gazed shudderingly at the unwelcoming habitation, at the dark eyelike windows, at the sweep of barren slope merging into the vast red valley, at the bold, bleak bluffs. Could any one live here? The nature of that sinister valley forbade a home there, and the spirit of the place hovered in the silence and space. Shefford thought irresistibly of how his enemies would have consigned him to just such a hell. He thought ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey

... I told her tales of the grey city of the North where I had been colleged. I told of the bleak and biting winds which cut their way to the marrow of the bones. I described the students rich and poor, but mostly poor, swarming into the gaunt quadrangles, reading eagerly in the library, hasting grimly to be wise, posting hotfoot to distinction or to death. She listened with eyes intent. ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett

... night is chill; the forest bare; Is it the wind that moaneth bleak? There is not wind enough in the air To move away the ringlet curl From the lovely lady's cheek— There is not wind enough to twirl The one red leaf, the last of its clan, That dances as often as dance it can, Hanging so light, ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin

... time, unaccustomed to being alone and disturbed by the bleak north wind which beat ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... the next day; and all through night and day the steady roar of beating cylinders hung in Kenneth Torrance's ears. At last came Point Christensen and a descent; sleep and then quick, decisive action; and again the amphibian rose, heavily loaded now, and droned on toward the ice and the cold bleak skies of the far north. On, ever on, until Point Barrow, Alaska's northernmost spur, was left behind to the east, and the world was one of drifting ice on gray water. Muscles cramped, mind dulled by the everlasting roar, head aching and weary, Ken held the amphibian ...
— Under Arctic Ice • H.G. Winter

... evening, when she passed into the drawing-room, with Mrs. Crowborough, bleak, unbending, and trailing her chains of jet, she comforted herself again with the reflection that what she was "seeing" might not be particularly exciting, "but ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow

... it is so bleak to-day and you have a cold, perhaps it would be just as well for you ...
— A Missionary Twig • Emma L. Burnett

... was to accompany him to the bishop's, but as it was still too soon to call for him, he stood for a few moments looking down upon the campus. The giant shadow of the Hall had now crept to the verge of the plateau. There was no human figure on its bleak expanse, but the small trees which found scant nourishment in the rock beneath swayed gently in the broken wind, like a line of sentries marking time. In the centre of the line the flagpole sprang up, thin and white, lifting the stars and stripes into the lurid light above the shadow. ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... the emblem of happiness, but he knew the blue of my eyes was the real joy sign—or something like that he said. It startled me. I tried to tell him he must not talk like that but my words were useless. He went on to say that the world was bleak and unlovely till I came to Philadelphia and wouldn't I tell him I ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers

... imperceptible touches of primrose on the eastern horns. It was a moonless night, but the sky was alive with stars, and now and then one fell. The last house in the valley was soon passed, and we entered those bleak gorges where the wind, fine, noiseless, penetrating like an edge of steel, poured slantwise on us from the north. As we rose, the stars to west seemed far beneath us, and the Great Bear sprawled upon the ridges of the lower hills outspread. We kept slowly ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... eagerly. The blue serge coat felt none too warm in the bleak east wind, and it would be a relief to be spared the chilly walk, and be bowled along instead in the doctor's luxurious brougham. She drew her chair nearer to the fire, and proceeded to confide various whys and wherefores to the sympathetic Eleanor—sympathetic, but hardly responsive ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... these often occupied the mind of Mr. Grim. Such were his thoughts as he sat in his luxurious parlor, one bleak December evening, surrounded by every external comfort his heart could desire, when a child not over seven or eight years of age was brought into the room by a servant, who ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur

... natural, that art had evidently interfered with nature, yet concealed its interference. After tracing it some yards, they came to a chasm on the opposite side; and, passing through it, Agellius soon found himself, to his surprise, on a bleak open hill, to which the huge mountain formed merely a sort of facade. Its surface was half rock, half moor, and it was surrounded by precipices. It was such a place as some hermit of the middle ages might have chosen for his solitude. The two walked briskly across it, and at length came ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... her eyes. She took Rhona's arm and they stepped out into the bleak street. Wind whipped their faces like quick-flicked knives. They walked ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim

... out into a bleak world. The sky was a leaden grey, and the wind from the river blew with ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse

... for you on needful matters," she began again. "I die here—I!—in this black house, in a bleak island, far from all decency and proper ways of man; and now my treasure must be left. Small pleasure have I had of it, and leave it with the less!" ...
— The Waif Woman • Robert Louis Stevenson

... views of the sea, the mountain-heights, and the valley-reaches, obtainable from Morne Rouge, the place has a somewhat bleak look. Perhaps this is largely owing to the universal slate-gray tint of the buildings,—very melancholy by comparison with the apricot and banana yellows tinting the walls of St. Pierre. But this cheerless gray is the only color which can resist the climate of Morne ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn

... blew the wind from the bleak north; tearing through the moaning pine forest, that tossed and swayed before the tempest, gnawing Catherine's nose and fingers, and snatching up, as it were, handfuls of snow, and hurling them in a rage through the air. Poor Catherine was nearly frozen, yet she struggled bravely ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... tossed it hither and thither, the boiling, racing flood hurried it with terrific force towards the ocean. The tall, massive figure swayed like a reed in a tempest, and suddenly the half despairing, half defying song was lost in the roar of the bleak, green surges. All knew ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... pile of rugged gray stone, symmetrically built, but aggressively ugly in its very regularity, since it insulted the graceful curves of Nature everywhere discernible. It stood nakedly amidst the bare, bleak meadows glittering with pools of still water, with not even the leaf of a creeper to soften its menacing walls, although above them appeared the full-foliaged tops of trees planted in the barrack-yard. It looked ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume

... itself before him, the sense of personal love and aid towards the Lord and Master whom he served grew upon him. Neither the gazelle-eyed Ayesha nor the prosperous village life presented any great temptation. He would have given them all for one bleak day of mist on a Border moss; it was the appalling contrast with the hold of a Moorish galley that at times startled him, together with the only too great probability that he should be utterly incapable of saving poor little Ulysse from ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge

... spring of the year 1421 was bleak and dreary in that wild lonely vale, and large was the fire burning on the hearth in the castle hall, in the full warmth of which there sat, with a light blue cloth cloak drawn tightly round him, a tall old man, of the giant mould of Scotland, and with ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge

... point of brilliance in the murky gloom. It showed, on the floor where they stood, a litter of dried vegetation—food, doubtless placed there as an offering. It was dry now, and dusty, and through it there shone the bleak whiteness of bones. Beyond was the floor, and beyond that.... The whiteness that had been but a blur grew ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various

... had dropped a shovelful of hot coals, or rather as if some corrosive fluid had been spilled. I remained here a few moments, idly wondering what might have been the history of the former tenants, and what could have induced any one to build a house in a spot so bleak and exposed, where scarcely a pretence of soil offered itself for a garden. As I stood there, a singular impression came upon me that I was not alone. For a moment, and a moment only, I became conscious of another presence in the room. The impression ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.

... swiftly after. The three were so tired, their vitality was so reduced that they lay down in the snow, and drew long, painful breaths. When some measure of strength was restored they stood up and surveyed the place where they stood, a bleak summit over which the wind blew sharply. Nothing grew there but low bushes, and they felt that, while they may have escaped the war band, their own physical case was worse instead of better. Both cold and wind ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler

... The country looked very bleak and bare, but a little hut was visible a short distance from the shore, and the children, having fastened up the Dolphins to one of the wooden piles, assisted the Dodo to alight, and made their ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow

... confronted her. "No, it ain't much of a fire yet, but our hired girl she joined a movin'-picture outfit, so us two he-things are doin' the best we can chasin' a breakfast." And the tramp, Overland Red, ragged, unkempt, jocular, rose from his knees beside a tiny blaze. He pulled a bleak flop of felt from his tangled hair in an over-accentuated ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... are utterly destitute of moral and religious teachings. No efforts have ever been made by Protestants for their salvation. If you fellows are looking, in earnest, for a hard job, there is one ready for you to tackle on those bleak prairies." ...
— Among the Sioux - A Story of the Twin Cities and the Two Dakotas • R. J. Creswell

... Ev'n winter bleak has charms to me, When winds rave thro' the naked tree; Or frosts on hills of Ochiltree Are hoary gray; Or blinding drifts wild-furious flee, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... I did not go to the plains this fall," said La Certe, stirring the logs on the fire with his toe and emitting a prolonged sigh of mingled smoke and contentment, while a blast from the bleak nor'-west shook every blackened rafter in ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne

... few days, which happened to be very fine, Beth revelled out of doors. Everything was a wonder and a joy to her in this fertile land, the trees especially, after the bleak, wild wastes to which she had been accustomed in the one stormy corner of Ireland she knew. Leaves and blossoms were just bursting out, and one day, wandering alone in the grounds, she happened unawares upon an orchard in full bloom, and fairly gasped, utterly overcome by ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... change from Lord Timon the rich, Lord Timon the delight of mankind, to Timon the naked, Timon the man-hater! Where were his flatterers now? Where were his attendants and retinue? Would the bleak air, that boisterous servitor, be his chamberlain, to put his shirt on warm? Would those stiff trees that had outlived the eagle turn young and airy pages to him, to skip on his errands when he bade them? Would the cool brook, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... picturesquely on a sky, human with smoke mildly ascending. A broken wall that a great elm tears and rends, startles the silence; apple-orchards spread no flowery snow, and the familiar thrushes have deserted the moss-grown trees, in other times their trees; and the virgin forest ceases only to make bleak place for marish plains with lonely pools and stagnating streams, where perchance a heron rises on blue ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore

... absent at a Shakespeare reading. Dr. Trenire had been out all day, a long round over bleak country, and had not been home more than an hour. Kitty had heard him come, and had longed—as she had never longed in the days when she was free to do as she liked—to go and superintend his meal, and hear all about his day. But she knew what a to-do there would ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... housie, too, in ruin! It's silly wa's the win's are strewin! An' naething, now, to big a new ane, O' foggage green! And bleak December's winds ensuin' Baith snell ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... of utter disillusion for her. The great house on the Avenue proved to be but four bleak walls; and when the villa on Long Island was built, she tried to be as enthusiastic as Morgan wanted her to be. He lavished gifts upon her. He brought out gay house-parties for weekends. Lucia did her best to keep her part of a bad bargain. She made herself ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne

... winters have held in their icy grasp the bleak land in which he yielded up his life for a principle, and the flowers of two summers have blossomed upon his grave, overlooking the Hudson. But it was only his body that we buried there. His spirit still lives, for his was a spirit too big and noble to be bound by the narrow confines of ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace

... Paris), having been left an orphan, was sent to live with relatives in a village on the Normandy coast. It was a bleak, inhospitable shore, and its inhabitants lived their drab, hopeless lives under the morbid fear of inevitable death. The Chanteaus, Pauline's guardians, took advantage of her in every way, and Lazare Chanteau, ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson

... my pathway bleak, Those flowers that once ran wild, As on a father's careworn cheek The ringlets of his child; The golden mingling with the gray, And stealing half ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... have fear, and this one was crying. I kept well behind her, and as soon as she reached the village, I meant to lose sight of her and return, for a village is guardian enough. But when we had passed the bleak meadow of the slaughter-house and the wide, wet-smelling wood yard and had reached the first cottage on Daphne Street, I was startled to see her unlatch that cottage gate and enter the yard. And I was suddenly sadly apprehensive, ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale

... under the sun. He stands for the natural verities. You cannot change him, move, nor hurt him. He can earn neither your praises nor reproach. As well might you blame the staring noon of summer or throw a kind word to the everlasting hills. The bleak pride of the Castillano, the flint and steel of Aragon, the languor which veils Andalusian fire—travelling the lands which gave them birth, you find them scored in large over mountain and plain and riverbed, ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett

... strange quietude, like a sense of apprehension in nature! And so on through the revolving year, in all places in all weathers, there is pleasure in the open air, except on these chalk hills because of their bleak nakedness. There the wind and driving rain are not for but against you, and may overcome you with misery. One feels their loneliness, monotony, and desolation on many days, sometimes even when it is not wet, and I here recall an amusing ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson

... advantage of being cool and healthy. It is all bare and windy, and one generally stops at a rest-house nearby for something to eat. I got out and took both dogs with me, while Kadir Buksh made tea. A soldier told, us we should find Stanley "out there," nodding his head towards a bare, bleak hill. ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling

... consented to, and with infinite difficulty they began their march; for, as the snow had completely covered every tract, and the daylight began to fail, they wandered at random through a vast and pathless wood. At every step which Tommy took he sank almost to his knees in snow. The wind was bleak and cold, and it was with much difficulty that Harry could prevail upon him to continue his journey. At length, however, as they thus pursued their way with infinite toil, they came to some lighted embers, which either some labourers or ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day

... raised our anchor, and continued to sail along that bleak coast until we came to a hidden harbor, well protected by a number of barren islands from the storms of the Arctic Ocean, and cast anchor before a large fishing settlement. It ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu

... bright centre and sunlight I leap, I caper, I dance my dance; but when I look up, I see they are not deceived. For nothing ever placates them, nothing ever moves to a look of approval that ring of bleak ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith

... died not by the squire's hand but by the sharp strong jaws of the hound who had once before saved the squire's life. But he was alive. It would not take much to kill him; a little pressure on his wounded throat would be enough. Even to leave him there, uncared for, till morning in the bleak wind, lying upon the cold ground, would be almost certain to put an end to his life. But to the honour of Charles James Juxon be it said that such thoughts never crossed his mind. He pulled off his heavy ulster greatcoat, wrapped it about the felon's ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford



Words linked to "Bleak" :   hopeless, inhospitable, cold



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com