From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishdismaldis‧mal /ˈdɪzməl/ ●○○ adjective 1 SAD/UNHAPPYif a situation or a place is dismal, it is so bad that it makes you feel very unhappy and hopeless The future looks pretty dismal right now. a dismal, grey afternoon2 FAILbad and unsuccessful The team’s record so far is pretty dismal. Her scheme was a dismal failure. —dismally adverb
Examples from the Corpus
dismal• The profit margin on hardware sales for the first quarter was a dismal 29%.• Melinda joined her husband in Moscow, but soon found life there bleak and dismal.• The couple lived in a dismal apartment in the poorest section of town.• Instead there would be the dismal apparatus of mutual suspicion familiar to every accountant.• The forecast had been dismal but wrong.• dismal economic news• It looked dismal enough when I saw it, as if given right over to darkness.• a dismal, gray afternoon• But it was a dismal moment for the pastry shop that Majed Makhoul had opened two months earlier in Qlaia.• It was a grey, dismal November afternoon.• Visitors to the camps went home with dismal stories to relate...• I understood that things could have been far more dismal than they were.dismal failure• It was a dismal failure. 1926-27 found him hawking a play round London offices with no potential takers.• Mitchell called the policy a dismal failure.• Jimmy Johnstone's life after football has been a catalogue of defeats and dismal failures.• This debate will no doubt continue, and clearly no project is either a complete success or a dismal failure.• It was a dismal failure, and was followed by restrictive legislation against the unions and by victimization of many union activists.• They are especially dismal failures in this regard because in fact they support these prejudices.Origin dismal (1300-1400) Anglo-French Medieval Latin dies mali “evil days” 