What's the difference between dour and gloomy?

Dour


Definition:

  • (a.) Hard; inflexible; obstinate; sour in aspect; hardy; bold.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Reports from the scenes of Muslim Brotherhood and Freedom and Justice Party rallies conveyed a dour mood in Cairo, while active clashes were reported in both coastal cities and upper Egypt.
  • (2) There’s hard work and dour activities and that’s what I’m going to be doing.” Corbyn and his deputy, Tom Watson , are expected to make regular – and more public – visits to Scotland to help Scottish Labour avoid a further rout at next May’s Holyrood elections; the latest opinion polls suggest the SNP is on course to win a second successive overall majority with its approval ratings at more than 50%.
  • (3) However, as we watch Blade Runner , Deckard doesn’t feel like a replicant; he is dour and unengaged, but lacks his victims’ detached innocence, their staccato puzzlement at their own untrained feelings.
  • (4) Reith, “his dour handsome face scarred like that of a villain in a melodrama”, was “a strange shepherd for such a mixed, bohemian flock … he had under his aegis a bevy of ex-soldiers, ex-actors, ex-adventurers which … even a Dartmoor prison governor might have had difficulty in controlling”.
  • (5) The dour Zenawi could not resist a swipe at western pundits who had once written off Africa.
  • (6) A spectacular fall from grace on the pitch – from first to seventh, playing dour football that is anathema to fans who feasted on success throughout the Ferguson era – will also lead to renewed scrutiny of the club's controversial US owners, the Glazer family , away from it.
  • (7) The seafront was grey and almost deserted; outside the dour concrete venue, there was a single delegate having a blustery cigarette.
  • (8) But it was in westerns that Peck's dour integrity showed itself best: unshaven and tough in Yellow Sky (1948); a dude learning to adapt to the west in The Big Country (1958); and obsessively after the men who raped and killed his wife in The Bravados (1958).
  • (9) On Tuesday, the bunkhouse breakfast room felt like a hunting lodge, with wives and girlfriends serving meals while working-class men with beards, flannel shirts and dour expressions milled about.
  • (10) Milosevic himself, until then a dour and orthodox communist, appeared to realise his gift for rhetoric and the power of nationalism.
  • (11) Saki (Hector Hugh Munro, 1870-1916) was raised by his strict, dour aunts and grandmother, and was gay but closeted all his life – for good reason, since homosexual acts between men were still illegal.
  • (12) Fun is fun, and please don't try and stop people having fun, things are dour enough as it is."
  • (13) Because there is no ‘message’ – there’s just Jeremy!” Membership Event: Guardian Live | The future of Labour: meet the next leader By the end of the night, even the dour stewards were applauding.
  • (14) This late action made the preceding dour fare seem all the more disappointing.
  • (15) We were told he would be the dour, humourless lefty; and again he has been a challenge to expectations.
  • (16) We talk some more about Mad Men , about: "The swirl and sound and fury of it… For a show that is as dour and moody and pendulous as ours, we have fun."
  • (17) George averaged only 14.5 points and six rebounds in the first two games of the series and started slowly against on Friday before gathering pace in the dour encounter.
  • (18) The two TV presenters broadcasting from the crowd – she in a gold-spangled minidress and rigid curls, him dour in black tie – shot baleful looks in his direction as he carried on honking.
  • (19) Murray is a bit dour true to his Scottish nature but he is an excellent player.
  • (20) Jeremy Corbyn conceded that it would not be easy to revive Labour’s position in Scotland but promised “hard work and dour activities” as he made his first visit to the nation since his election as party leader.

Gloomy


Definition:

  • (superl.) Imperfectly illuminated; dismal through obscurity or darkness; dusky; dim; clouded; as, the cavern was gloomy.
  • (superl.) Affected with, or expressing, gloom; melancholy; dejected; as, a gloomy temper or countenance.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Analysts at RBS said that on the basis of these gloomy figures, industrial output in the eurozone as a whole looked likely to have declined by about 4% in the final quarter of 2008.
  • (2) On 1 January 1832, he reports that: "The new year to my jaundiced senses bore a most gloomy appearance.
  • (3) It would be a mistake to rush it.” But, while revealing disappointing trading figures for the Christmas period and a gloomy outlook for 2017 , Wolfson said he did not think Brexit jitters were stopping people from shopping: “It is more the fact that incomes are likely to be squeezed.” Next's gloomy 2017 forecast drags down fashion retail shares Read more Wolfson was one of a handful of senior business leaders to openly back Brexit but has said in the past that the referendum vote was about UK independence, not isolation, and the country should be aiming for “an open, global-facing economy”.
  • (4) Sales on the high street were much higher than expected this month, rising at their fastest rate in six years as consumers defied the gloomy economic outlook.
  • (5) He said the fact that the chancellor, George Osborne, had given permission to the Bank of England to pump more economy into the economy in another round of so-called "quantitative easing" – coupled with gloomy employment figures from the US – was evidence of how fragile the economy was.
  • (6) The gloomy feedback from industry has raised the prospect of a triple-dip recession and a further worsening of the government's finances.
  • (7) The Lib Dem cabinet minister said he would "tell it as I see it" as he delivered a gloomy economic forecast, predicting "difficult times" ahead.
  • (8) Microsoft: bitter medicine But the story is gloomy for Microsoft.
  • (9) Now, however, the new administration of Hassan Rouhani is taking steps to open up Iran to foreigners in an effort to improve its international image after the gloomy years under Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – and to bring in much-needed foreign currency to an economy reeling from years of sanctions.
  • (10) Thus, the prognosis of CNS granulocytic sarcoma is not uniformly gloomy if treated aggressively by combined modalities.
  • (11) The outlook is gloomy in the light of the potential for widespread disruption of normal social and economic activities.
  • (12) After a bright start to the morning, the day will turn gloomy as the solar wind lashes Britain with energetic particles and an enormous ball of magnetised plasma slams into Earth bringing a few days of geomagnetic storms.
  • (13) Steven Fletcher's return from long-term injury was one of few positives on another gloomy day for travelling Mackems and the Scotland striker levelled the scores with a fine header after the interval, when he had been brought on for a supposedly angry Ji.
  • (14) Britain Chancellor George Osborne is to downgrade his growth forecasts for the UK after a series of gloomy business surveys and sharply declining consumer confidence.
  • (15) With so many gloomy headlines, it would be easy to believe that irreversible runaway climate change is now inevitable .
  • (16) As our ambient lighting is gradually reduced from a high level, subjects use the following words - bright, gloomy, dim and dark.
  • (17) Click here for the Magic in the Moonlight trailer Compared with the gloomy ruminations on ageing and aspiration that characterised the well-received Blue Jasmine, which won Cate Blanchett an Oscar , this is Allen going back to the knockabout farce and blithe May-December couplings that populate his lighter films.
  • (18) The upstairs living room, which I remember from the last time I interviewed her as slightly gloomy, crowded with towers of books and magazines and oppressive paintings and wall hangings, is today brightened by yet more flowers, all in deep shades of orange and red.
  • (19) This portends a gloomy scenario for the poorer populations of Europe in the 1990s.
  • (20) The gloomy outlook for the sector came as the music chain HMV followed camera-supplier Jessops into administration after lengthy battles by both companies to unearth business models that could compete with online retailers.