Other forms: bleaker, bleakest
Bleak means cold, bare and offering no hope. A bleak landscape, a bleak outlook, bleak weather.
Of a place it means exposed and treeless — a bleak moor, a bleak shoreline. Of a situation it means hopeless: a bleak prognosis, bleak prospects. The two senses share the sense of nothing to shelter behind. Note bleakness; and that bleak and bleach are the same word, from a root meaning pale — a bleak place is a colourless one.
1adjectivebleakCold, bare and exposed.
“The coast in winter is bleak, with grey rocks and a freezing wind.”
2adjectiveofferingOffering no hope.
“With no jobs and rising prices, the future looked bleak for young people in the town.”
bleak is a quality of barrenness.
Also accepted in games: grim
Middle English bleke came partly from Old Norse and partly from Old English blac, pale. Bleach is the same root, so bleak is literally drained of colour.
Proto-Indo-European
*bʰleyǵ-
Middle English
bleke
English, today
bleak
Built from
From Middle English bleke (also bleche, whence the English doublet a doublet of bleach), and bleike (due to Old Norse), and earlier Middle English blak, blac (“pale, wan”), from Old English blǣc, blǣċ, blāc (“bleak, pale, pallid”) and Old Norse bleikr (“pale, whitish”), all from Proto-Germanic blaikaz (“pale, shining”). Cognate with Dutch bleek (“pale, wan, pallid”), Low German blek (“pale”), German bleich (“pale, wan, sallow”), Danish bleg (“pale”), Swedish blek (“pale, pallid”), Norwegian Bokmål bleik, blek (“pale”), Norwegian Nynorsk bleik (“pale”), Faroese bleikur (“pale”), Icelandic bleikur (“pale, pink”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Sharper Adjectives