Bleak describes something cold, empty, or without much hope, like a bare winter landscape or a hopeless situation.
It comes from Old Norse “bleikr,” meaning “pale” or “shining,” and is related to words for whiteness and paleness. Over time, the sense shifted from “pale and exposed” to “cheerless and harsh.”
Interestingly, a word that once meant “pale and shining” now usually means “gloomy and hopeless.” That flip shows how humans often see emptiness and exposure—like a bare, white field—as emotionally cold.
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