• adj. 沉闷的，枯燥的

来自PIE*dhreu, 滴，掉落，词源同drip, drop. 原义为滴血的，引申义沉闷的，阴深的。

dreary

dreary: [OE] In Old English, dreary (or drēorig, as it then was) meant ‘dripping with blood, gory’, but its etymological connections are with ‘dripping, falling’ rather than with ‘blood’. It goes back to a West Germanic base *dreuz-, *drauz- which also produced Old English drēosna ‘drop, fall’, probably the ultimate source of drizzle [16] and drowsy.

The literal sense ‘bloody’ disappeared before the end of the Old English period in the face of successive metaphorical extensions: ‘dire, horrid’; ‘sad’ (echoed in the related German traurig ‘sad’); and, in the 17th century, the main modern sense ‘gloomy, dull’. Drear is a conscious archaism, created from dreary in the 17th century.
=> drizzle, drowsy

dreary (adj.)

Old English dreorig "sad, sorrowful," originally "cruel, bloody, blood-stained," from dreor "gore, blood," from (ge)dreosan (past participle droren) "fall, decline, fail," from Proto-Germanic *dreuzas (cognates: Old Norse dreyrigr "gory, bloody," and more remotely, German traurig "sad, sorrowful"), from PIE root *dhreu- "to fall, flow, drip, droop" (see drip (v.)).

The word has lost its original sense of "dripping blood." Sense of "dismal, gloomy" first recorded 1667 in "Paradise Lost," but Old English had a related verb drysmian "become gloomy."

1. a dreary winter's day

阴沉的冬日

来自《权威词典》

2. The otherwise dreary book is enlivened by some very amusing illustrations.

这本枯燥乏味的书幸亏加了一些精彩的插图才变得生动有趣.

来自《简明英汉词典》

3. His speech was dreary.

他的讲演枯燥乏味.

来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

4. So a dreary Monday afternoon in Walthamstow is nothing to write home about, right?

这么说，在沃尔瑟姆斯托度过的一个沉闷的周一下午没什么值得大书特书的，是吗？

来自柯林斯例句

5. She was tired of hearing the same dreary tale of drunkenness and violence.

她听够了那些关于酗酒和暴力的乏味故事.

来自《简明英汉词典》