What's the difference between bleak and miserable?

Bleak


Definition:

  • (a.) Without color; pale; pallid.
  • (a.) Desolate and exposed; swept by cold winds.
  • (a.) Cold and cutting; cheerless; as, a bleak blast.
  • (a.) A small European river fish (Leuciscus alburnus), of the family Cyprinidae; the blay.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) "The results present a remarkably bleak portrait of life in the UK today and the shrinking opportunities faced by the bottom third of UK society," said the head of the project, Professor David Gordon of Bristol University.
  • (2) The study says: "The short-term outlook for the labour market looks bleak.
  • (3) He'd later carry this over into Netflix's House Of Cards but before that, TV had already begun to emulate this new, bleak, antiheroic maturity with a cycle of dark, longform, acclaimed dramas, commencing with The Sopranos and culminating in Breaking Bad .
  • (4) This is training that predators rely upon,” she says in the book, “It is, perhaps, a form of gender-wide grooming.” For Caro, the opportunity of the book was to “place the blame where it lies,” she says, “squarely on the shoulders of those who use their power to exploit and damage others.” For all its bleakness, I drew comfort from the stories of the other contributors.
  • (5) Through small and large acts of deprivation and destruction we follow the process: the removal of hope, of dignity, of luxury, of necessity, of self; the reduction of a man to a hoarder of grey slabs of bread and the scrapings of a soup bowl (wonderfully told all this, with a novelist's gift for detail and sometimes very nearly comic surprise), to the confinement of a narrow bed – in which there is "not even any room to be afraid" – with a stranger who doesn't speak your language, to the cruel illogicality of hating a fellow victim of oppression more than you hate the oppressor himself – one torment following another, and even the bleak comfort of thinking you might have touched rock bottom denied you as, when the most immediate cause of a particular stress comes to an end, "you are grievously amazed to see that another one lies behind; and in reality a whole series of others".
  • (6) He said the “bleak alternative” would have been to go through numerous probate courts while distant relatives of Gurlitt made their claims on the collection.
  • (7) After dismissing the ending of Revolutionary Road as "falsely bleak" and telling his audience that "there's something goofy about American literature since modernism came to an end", the celebrated author of Freedom and The Corrections moved on to social media .
  • (8) Bleak jokes and cartoons have been circulating for weeks in the anti-Assad camp on the theme of barrel bombs serving as ballot boxes.
  • (9) "I have such passion for what I do that I can't see it as bleak.
  • (10) It is to be hoped that pharmaceutical developments will improve the current bleak picture in which there are no proven treatments for ischaemic stroke or intracerebral haemorrhage.
  • (11) Next month Commonwealth leaders gather in Sri Lanka amid a bleak human rights situation as the country emerges from two decades of civil war that saw 40,000 civilians lose their lives .
  • (12) Things began to look bleak for the Saddlers when Chelsea extended their lead four minutes from the interval.
  • (13) The compelling television series The Returned , which concludes on Sunday on Channel 4, and several award-winning titles from French authors are earning fresh international plaudits for Gallic storytelling and proving that it is not only Norway, Sweden and Denmark that can offer a bleak outlook and a half-lit landscape.
  • (14) The alternative is to leave our young children facing a bleak future.
  • (15) Concomitant other distant metastases conferred a bleak prognosis.
  • (16) "I don't know why," he says, but it's something that didn't even happen at his lowest ebb: amid the bleakness of the early 70s, he somehow kept sporadically producing incredible songs: Til I Die, This Whole World, Sail On Sailor… There's always touring, however.
  • (17) The forecast is for one of the coldest winters in Syria for 100 years, with more than four million people displaced inside the country and an estimated two million who have fled into neighbouring countries, facing an increasingly bleak existence.
  • (18) The Reading group reaction to Bleak House has been overwhelmingly positive.
  • (19) The childish vulnerability she brings out in Sara balances out the visual bleakness of the film.
  • (20) The bleak outlook for patients with marrow necrosis based on early experience in adults with disseminated malignancy does not appear to apply to children with ALL.

Miserable


Definition:

  • (a.) Very unhappy; wretched.
  • (a.) Causing unhappiness or misery.
  • (a.) Worthless; mean; despicable; as, a miserable fellow; a miserable dinner.
  • (a.) Avaricious; niggardly; miserly.
  • (n.) A miserable person.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) He told strikers at St Thomas’ hospital, London: “By taking action on such a miserable morning you are sending a strong message that decent men and women in the jewel of our civilisation are not prepared to be treated as second-class citizens any more.
  • (2) "It's always been done in a really miserable way in the past, but this is fresh and new.
  • (3) Supporting a Sunderland side who had last won a home Premier League game back in January, when Stoke City were narrowly defeated, is not a pursuit for the faint-hearted but this was turning into the equivalent of the sudden dawning of a gloriously hot sunny day amid a miserable, cold, wet summer.
  • (4) People like Hugo forgot how truly miserable Paris had been for ordinary Parisians.” Out of a job and persona non grata in Paris, Haussmann spent six months in Italy to lift his spirits.
  • (5) But my characters are either really strong, miserable or tortured."
  • (6) A full marching band moved through a sea of umbrellas, playing the Les Miserables song Do You Hear the People Sing.
  • (7) Similarly at world level, it considers the struggles and efforts by the miserable and oppressed nations for achievement of their legitimate rights and independence as their due rights, because people have the right to liberate their countries from colonialism and obtain their rights.
  • (8) My first marriage is the only thing I've ever failed at and I failed miserably."
  • (9) If after 10 years the Californian law is working well: that’s to say it is not being used against the weak and miserable as a cheaper alternative to proper palliative care, there will be no reason not to extend it here.
  • (10) Low point: "When a show I directed, Paul Simon's The Capeman, failed miserably."
  • (11) The smile, so noticeably absent during a miserable final season at his boyhood club, was back.
  • (12) His father died when Giulio was two, and the family survived on his mother's miserly widow's pension.
  • (13) Roberto Firmino and Adam Lallana established a comfortable advantage for the home side, only for Adam Johnson’s free-kick, and Simon Mignolet’s weak attempt to stop it, plus Defoe’s clinical late strike to extend Liverpool’s miserable run to five points out of 18 in 2016.
  • (14) This drubbing exposed not only the team's inadequacy on the day in the face of a rampant United side who sensed miserable resistance almost from the kick-off, but also Arsène Wenger's tepid commitment to the FA Cup, whatever his ready-made complaints of depleted resources before and after.
  • (15) "He truly had such a miserable time on the first day or two of the shoot.
  • (16) Fair pay, not benefits or subsidies to miserly employers, brought Labour into being – so why is the party in danger of letting this strong emblematic policy slip away?
  • (17) On the positive side, it will very soon overtake Les Miserables (£40.8m) to become the second-biggest 2013 release, behind only Despicable Me 2 (£47.4m).
  • (18) Smoldering resentment, chronic anger, self-centeredness, vindictiveness, and a constant feeling of being abused ultimately produce a miserable human being who, as well as being alienated from self, alienates those in the interpersonal sphere.
  • (19) As soon as you live in the place, it becomes grey and miserable – as do the people.
  • (20) The good thing about the above is the equal-opportunities nature of it: almost everyone is made to feel inadequate or miserable.