What's the difference between glum and sullen?

Glum


Definition:

  • (n.) Sullenness.
  • (a.) Moody; silent; sullen.
  • (v. i.) To look sullen; to be of a sour countenance; to be glum.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) "We don't have any reason to, to be honest," he says, with a touch of glumness.
  • (2) The old, optimistic growth forecasts were torn up, replaced by the glum admission that this year the economy will have shrunk by 0.1%.
  • (3) But it feels like a painful loss to a small community that once looked to Labour as its natural home – and which is fast reaching the glum conclusion that Labour has become a cold house for Jews.
  • (4) The AU delegation - made up of South Africa , Uganda, Mauritania, Congo-Brazzaville and Mali - left the talks looking glum, without making a public comment and to the derisive shouts of the protesters outside the hotel.
  • (5) We can see why they’re glum, but it’s not going to be a challenge for Private Eye to get a cover page joke out of it.
  • (6) They have glumly predicted precisely that outcome for some time.
  • (7) Sandwiched on a panel between the mayors of Los Angeles, Copenhagen, New York, and Johannesburg, the most rapidly converted man in the city struck out at the glums.
  • (8) (As glum centrists often observe: “He beat us twice.”) The Labour leader might not have taken his party to victory, but he has earned the right to fight again.
  • (9) Addressing a glum group of SPD supporters in Berlin, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the outgoing foreign minister and SPD candidate for chancellor, said it was a "bitter day for German social democracy".
  • (10) At times, Sarkozy had seemed tired and glum on the campaign trail.
  • (11) The mood in No 10 grew extremely glum as a steady drip of areas were declaring two points below their own predictions.
  • (12) I had expected the American guests to be in a state of hysteria, but apart from a few glumly watching CNN in the bar, hotel life went on as usual.
  • (13) Conventional understanding of politics assumes that that kind of rational argument is devastating: if you amass the historical data and the foreign examples, point to defeat after defeat for Corbynist programmes or Sanders-like candidates, surely their supporters will glumly lower their placards and come to their senses.
  • (14) I felt the same way I would if I went to a play and sat through an hour of about 50 actors filing onto the stage one by one and staring at me glumly in turn before any actual business resulted.
  • (15) He used to mock me for it, and see it as part of my characteristic glumness, which was such a contrast to his relentless enthusiasm.
  • (16) I can’t make decisions for myself”, she declares glumly.
  • (17) Prisoners' breath catches in clouds while they glumly circuit the courtyard.
  • (18) It’s melancholy because it rests on the glum admission that these two peoples, both asserting their right to self-determination, are unable to determine their own futures.
  • (19) Some contrasted his eloquence with Zuma, who looked glum each time his face was shown and roundly booed.
  • (20) The study's findings may be skewed by Dutch psychologists spending summers doing glum research rather than catching rays.

Sullen


Definition:

  • (a.) Lonely; solitary; desolate.
  • (a.) Gloomy; dismal; foreboding.
  • (a.) Mischievous; malignant; unpropitious.
  • (a.) Gloomily angry and silent; cross; sour; affected with ill humor; morose.
  • (a.) Obstinate; intractable.
  • (a.) Heavy; dull; sluggish.
  • (n.) One who is solitary, or lives alone; a hermit.
  • (n.) Sullen feelings or manners; sulks; moroseness; as, to have the sullens.
  • (v. t.) To make sullen or sluggish.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Most defendants in multimillion-euro fraud cases turn up to court ashen-faced and sullen-looking.
  • (2) Broadly defined, this sort of behaviour involves procrastination, stubbornness, resentment, sullenness, obstructionism, self-pity and a tendency to create chaotic situations.
  • (3) The result is a weird kind of dissonance: blogs and op-ed pieces written in London salivate over "the most important byelection in 30 years" and claim – with some justification – that its outcome will have profound consequences for the two coalition parties, while most locals view it all with a sullen detachment.
  • (4) They were instantly swamped by sunlight; more the sullen accused on trial than Her Majesty's front bench.
  • (5) "Even a total stranger could experience the chilling effect of seeing sullen pairs of the Guardia Civil walking the street."
  • (6) In his memoir , Brown’s former aide Damian McBride candidly describes the thrill of having the ear of one of the most powerful men in the land – though he confesses the prime minister would “stare at [him] sullenly for a moment or two, then say: ‘Get me Ed Balls.’” I certainly met plenty of chiefs of staff and spin doctors who jealously guarded their privileged access to a particular politician and their status as that MP’s “vicar on Earth”.
  • (7) Against a backdrop described by the King's Fund thinktank as "deepening pessimism about the ability of the NHS to make ends meet, particularly in 2015-16", many on the health side are sullenly resentful of "their" money going into the BCF.
  • (8) Factor analysis of this brief inventory resulted in eight factors: disorientation, impaired concentration and thinking, paranoid-hallucinatory symptoms, anxiety, sullen inadequacy (restraint depression), hostility, loss of control, giving up.
  • (9) Through a double-glazed window in an adjacent room, a sullen security guard in khaki watches over all.
  • (10) Shortly after midnight Friday, partygoers belted Purple Rain together, a notably moving moment amid a sullen day.
  • (11) That sullen death-stare she perfected as April in Parks & Rec should come in handy somewhere on the dark side, perhaps as a female Sith Lord – a Sith Lady, if you will.
  • (12) If you’re sensing that the Mill is bored, or better yet, indifferent, or better yet, showing all the sullen ardour of a husband obliging himself to make love to his wife in the thick of a carnal indifference, then take your right hand, place it over your left shoulder and give yourself a big old pat on the back.
  • (13) I interviewed G-Unit once (minus the banged-up Tony Yayo) and they were the antithesis of the sullen, aggressive rapper stereotype (although they did turn their noses up at the very idea of letting any of the "British food" at their 5-star hotel pass their lips, and sent their manager out for a McDonalds instead).
  • (14) There are roadblocks manned by sullen-looking teenagers cradling AK-47s, but no meaningful law and order.
  • (15) Behind came a straggling caravan of mules and porters, including a couple of teenage boys who watched the college girls with sullen fascination.
  • (16) McFadden's penalty brought City a point, at which point William Gallas went all precious, attacking an advertising board and sitting sullenly on the pitch after the final whistle.
  • (17) A period as manager of Port Vale, after Stoke had rather sullenly parted company with him, reducing his wages and refusing him complimentary tickets, was ill-starred.
  • (18) It made him look sullen, grumpy and at worst disengaged from his challenger.
  • (19) Obscenity is lecherous and sullen in regard to women and virulent towards men: it may then be interpreted as a mean of struggle against the anxiety of death.
  • (20) Manchester United survived a couple of scares in 2008 at Wigan, but ultimately won 2-0 comfortably, while in 2010 Chelsea romped to an 8-0 victory over Wigan at Stamford Bridge as United sullenly and pointlessly beat Stoke City 4-0 at home.