What's the difference between gloomy and melancholy?

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.

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?