These words refer to dimly lit, unpleasant places or to pessimistic frames of mind. Gloomy is the most general of these words. In reference to places, it can suggest poor lighting: gloomy hallways where I had to grope my way. But now it more often suggests drabness: three gloomy , narrow rooms without a stick of furniture anywhere. In reference to a mental state, the word suggests someone who sees the hopeless side of any problem: his gloomy comments on the troubles they should have in clearing customs. In this context, the word has an overtone of criticism that suggests unnecessary worry. Dreary most appropriately describes drab surroundings rather than states of mind: escaping from a dreary , small-town existence. Used more loosely, the word is often meant to convey disapproval of a situation both tedious and sordid: the dreary machinations of corrupt politicians.

Sombre and murky may both describe dimly lit surroundings: a clouded moon that made the path sombre and forbidding; London streets made murky by fog. Sombre , however, is the one word here that may have positive overtones in suggesting a restrained despair or a subdued, stark simplicity of effect: his sombre acceptance of the bad news that stood in such sharp contrast to her wild, hysterical cries of self-pity; the novel’s sombre purity that removed it so decidedly from the charge of fashionable nihilism. The special overtones of murky suggest something clouded in confusing obscurity: motives that must always remain murky no matter how we attempt to reconstruct the actions of the killer.

Dark and grey suggest a literal dimness or a gloomy outlook: the dark house; the dark cast of his mind; another grey morning of mist and rain. In referring to states of mind, grey has a special overtone of dull, unrelieved sameness: the grey monotony of the days behind her, the grey stretch of days that still lay before her.