What's the difference between gloom and melancholy?

Gloom


Definition:

  • (n.) Partial or total darkness; thick shade; obscurity; as, the gloom of a forest, or of midnight.
  • (n.) A shady, gloomy, or dark place or grove.
  • (n.) Cloudiness or heaviness of mind; melancholy; aspect of sorrow; low spirits; dullness.
  • (n.) In gunpowder manufacture, the drying oven.
  • (v. i.) To shine or appear obscurely or imperfectly; to glimmer.
  • (v. i.) To become dark or dim; to be or appear dismal, gloomy, or sad; to come to the evening twilight.
  • (v. t.) To render gloomy or dark; to obscure; to darken.
  • (v. t.) To fill with gloom; to make sad, dismal, or sullen.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Byatt said that, while she had not wished to present an allegory or a polemic, the story was impelled by a profound sense of gloom about the environment and indeed about all human endeavours.
  • (2) Thus, knowledge of HIV antibody status appears to dispel a sense of gloom in persons who incorrectly believe themselves to be infected with HIV, but does not appear to induce significant distress in those whose expectation of a positive result is confirmed.
  • (3) The Nuit debout has some aspects of a May 68 for the internet age, but with a major difference: the revolutionary students of half a century ago came of age during the trente glorieuses , the 30 glorious years of postwar economic growth, and wanted to crack open a conservative society; those of 2016 are, on the contrary, the children of 30 years of high unemployment, economic gloom and disenchantment with the way representative democracy works.
  • (4) In Dublin, the general mood was summed up by the Evening Herald headline, referring to a slogan from an car advert featuring Henry: "It's Va Va Gloom".
  • (5) 9pm BST: In fresh gloom on Wall Street, the Dow sheds 449 points to close at 10,609.
  • (6) In a day of unremitting gloom, and yet more market turbulence, the Greek government also stood on the precipice of collapse, risking an uncontrolled default, as the government of George Papandreou faced a late-night confidence vote in parliament.
  • (7) Gianni Infantino’s victory offers Fifa a glimmer of hope amid the gloom Read more David Gill, the FA director who also sits on the executive committee at both Uefa and Fifa, said Infantino’s election was “a good day for football”, while the American Fifa executive committee member Sunil Gulati also hailed it as “a good day for the sport”.
  • (8) The charge merely adds to the gloom engulfing Mourinho as he contemplates the ramifications of his side’s fifth defeat in 10 Premier League games.
  • (9) She lurches up from the corner with cheerful gloom.
  • (10) Chelsea v Bournemouth: Premier League – as it happened Read more Mourinho’s post-match gloom reflected as much, his criticisms of the officials all rather half-hearted given the fact that, when he has lambasted perceived mistakes this term, he has been slapped down with heavy fines, a stadium ban and a threat of another to come.
  • (11) The speech will be “very different than some of the doom and gloom we hear from some of the Republican candidates out there”, he told ABC.
  • (12) Although I've learned to appreciate the grim beauty of murkiness, the washrag skies and mud so jealous it clings to every step, this emerald vision in the monochrome gloom is startling.
  • (13) I like the challenges that come with those that thrive in such adverse conditions, and there are plenty: woodland species that make the most of what little sunlight hits the leaf litter; ferns that like dripping cave mouths and cliff faces cast in gloom; and small shrubs that eke out a living under bigger things, such as butcher’s broom ( Ruscus aculeatus ) and fragrant sweet box ( sarcoccoca ).
  • (14) Carpetright also added to the gloom, axing this year's dividend and warning that it sees "no respite" from the challenges that have forced several high street names into administration in recent weeks.
  • (15) The gloom was soon to build when five minutes after the interval Giggs won a corner with a sprightly run.
  • (16) The plea for government intervention comes as chancellor George Osborne continues to tour China, where figures showed local factory activity shrinking at its fastest pace in six and a half years in September, adding to a sense of gloom over the prospects for the world economy.
  • (17) When Barack Obama was elected US president in the depths of economic gloom, satirical news outlet the Onion carried the headline: "Black man given nation's worst job."
  • (18) The one message that is important for both patients and physicians is that the gloom and doom of the 1960s and 1970s can now be replaced by a spirit of optimism.
  • (19) As Europe scrambled to put together a coherent answer to the biggest challenge the union has faced, EU interior ministers meeting in Amsterdam on Monday compounded a sense of gloom and confusion in the face of ever rising numbers of people heading into Greece from Turkey.
  • (20) It fears that, set against the gloom of the past three years, the enthusiasm produced by even a low level of growth may be enough to keep the government, or at least the Conservatives , in power.

Melancholy


Definition:

  • (n.) Depression of spirits; a gloomy state continuing a considerable time; deep dejection; gloominess.
  • (n.) Great and continued depression of spirits, amounting to mental unsoundness; melancholia.
  • (n.) Pensive maditation; serious thoughtfulness.
  • (n.) Ill nature.
  • (a.) Depressed in spirits; dejected; gloomy dismal.
  • (a.) Producing great evil and grief; causing dejection; calamitous; afflictive; as, a melancholy event.
  • (a.) Somewhat deranged in mind; having the jugment impaired.
  • (a.) Favorable to meditation; somber.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) One radio critic described Jacobs' late night Sunday show as a "tidying-up time, a time for wistfulness, melancholy, a recognition that there were once great things and great feelings in this world.
  • (2) And melancholy is not the only thing that links Haigh’s work.
  • (3) Melancholy originally had another meaning from the present one.
  • (4) the agitated type of involutional melancholy occurred twice as often in Canada as in Hungary, the apathetic cases were rarer in Canada, and the illness began earlier among Canadian women.
  • (5) Thus New Zealand, like other countries, may be entering an age of melancholy.
  • (6) English explanations stressed religious aspects and a relationship to melancholy.
  • (7) I too was attracted to the paintings of De Chirico and Delvaux, with their dreamplaces – empty, melancholy cities, abandoned temples, broken statues, shadows, exaggerated perspectives.
  • (8) Earlier this week in Janesville, where post-industrial melancholy is evident in a closed car plant and eerily quiet downtown, House speaker Paul Ryan crushed a Trump-style challenger in a congressional primary.
  • (9) There was always a rueful melancholy, stiffened by irony and leavened by humour about him.
  • (10) Song of the summer was Waterloo Sunset by the Kinks, with its odd blend of keening melancholy and positivism.
  • (11) Resorting to a series of Ted the swordsman scenes which may merely be the lurid fantasies of the heroine, director Christine Jeffs never makes it clear whether Hughes was a rampaging philanderer whose sexual conquests and general obliviousness to Plath's mounting depression led to her demise, or a man driven into other women's arms by his wife's chronic melancholy - perhaps the most time-honoured excuse of the inveterate tomcat - or both.
  • (12) "Oh, if one of Dostoevsky's novels, whose black melancholy is regarded with such indulgent admiration, were signed with the name of Goncourt, what a slating it would get all along the line."
  • (13) It's a melancholy fate for any writer to become an eponym for all that he despised, but that is what happened to George Orwell, whose memory is routinely abused in unthinking uses of the adjective "Orwellian".
  • (14) As the lead singer with the Walker Brothers, he enjoyed a number of melancholy hits with songs such as The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore, My Ship Is Coming In, No Regrets.
  • (15) The leading role is infinitely variable: as Oscar Wilde said , "There are as many Hamlets as there are melancholies."
  • (16) In the right light and with the right song playing on the radio, there is a certain melancholy charm to this bleak highway with its unfolding panorama of wind turbines and electricity pylons stretching to the horizon.
  • (17) On the contrary: Sørens incomparable melancholy, mental agony and anxiety (fear or anguish) forced the faith, existing independently of them, in a radical refining.
  • (18) There’s a magnificent melancholy about him, this shadowy figure performing an act of unrequited love.
  • (19) Closer is a melancholy piece but it is also laugh-out-loud funny, often, as in the very best drama, at moments of starkest pain.
  • (20) Research is needed to determine whether youth will be predisposed to further depressive episodes and, if so, will we be entering a new age of melancholy?