What's the difference between bleak and somber?

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.

Somber


Definition:

  • (v. t.) Alt. of Sombre
  • (a.) Alt. of Sombre
  • (n.) Alt. of Sombre

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Melanomas developed on giant pigmented naevi had a particularly somber prognosis: death occurred within 6, 7 and 3 months respectively in the 3 cases observed.
  • (2) Uncompleted mourning and the depression and somber states of mind it created were absorbed by their children from birth on.
  • (3) In these very old people with very somber prognosis, anemia was corrected by surgery without recurrence after 8 and 10 months respectively.
  • (4) If Trump seems strangely incapable of consistency except in the matter of walling out and deporting immigrants, somber Ted Cruz is lurking nearby to alarm us with his ideological purity.
  • (5) Although most readers consider medical publications to be somber and somnifacient, a critical eye will discover a remarkable array of absurdities and assorted other oddities, totally unintended by the authors.
  • (6) Almost every report on macular degeneration begins with a somber reminder that macular degeneration is the single most common cause of blindness in the elderly in the United States and Europe.
  • (7) 'A lot of the movements to combat violence against women are somber.
  • (8) Coronary lesions with atheromatous deposits occurring in later childhood characterize homozygous type IIa hypercholesterolaemia and condition the somber prognosis of a disease which affects one subject in a million.
  • (9) The statement read: It is with a heavy heart and somber mind that we remember and honor the victims, survivors, heroes of the Holocaust.
  • (10) The day after the election, I walked around the camp and it was really somber,” said Kandi Mossett, a member of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara tribes who has been camping at Standing Rock since mid-August.
  • (11) The mood was somber, and many people wiped away tears.
  • (12) She suggests that the question for anyone considering standing for the US presidency should be: “What’s your vision for America?” Then she supplies her own answer: “The challenge is to lead in a way that unites us again and renews the American Dream … Ultimately, what happens in 2016 should be about what kind of future Americans want for themselves and their children – and grandchildren.” The start of the book is more somber.
  • (13) Since President Barack Obama took office, there have been at least 16 major mass shootings, after which he has offered somber words of condolence and called for national healing.
  • (14) In 1811 Mary Reynolds, a somber Pennsylvania spinster, awoke from a prolonged sleep as a new personality.
  • (15) This discussion forms the basis of a review of the worldwide literature, but stresses two problems which determine the prognosis: that of diagnosis, which in the majority of cases is very late, and that of their prognosis, which remains somber because of their tendency to metastasize by blood-borne spread and that of locoregional recurrences.
  • (16) In a strong but somber voice, McDonnell told the judge before sentencing that he was “a heartbroken and humbled man” and that he holds himself accountable.
  • (17) In other essays, she tries to educate a caddish boyfriend by sharing wisdom from He’s Just Not That Into You , and unexpectedly surrenders to the madness of wedding gown shopping, in which “dresses are brought out from back rooms with somber reverence, like the Torah being revealed from the ark”.
  • (18) She did not answer a question about whether Trump did not want to offend people, saying only: “It was our honor to issue a statement in remembrance of this important day.” In its original statement, the White House said: “It is with a heavy heart and somber mind that we remember and honor the victims, survivors, heroes of the Holocaust .
  • (19) At the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 369 hall in Louisville, where supporters had hoped to celebrate a Grimes win, the mood quickly turned somber: one minute, a few young employees were playing stickball while waiting for the party to start, and the next the hall was empty, as the few people who had arrived before the race was called went up to the war room to commiserate and watch the results of the statehouse races.
  • (20) Despite significant advances in many areas, the morbidity and mortality statistics remain as somber reminders of the devastation attributed to this epidemic.