dismal

Compared meaning: feeling or causing sadness (adjective).

比较义项：感到或令人感到忧郁、沮丧（形容词）。

• blue

  Blue describes a person's own temporary sad mood, always with a linking verb like feel or look; it is casual and not used to describe things or events, only people.

  blue 只能用来形容人自己一时的伤感情绪，常与 feel、look 等系动词连用，属于口语化用法，不能形容事物或事件。

  Don't worry about him, he's just feeling a little blue today.

  别担心他，他今天只是有点儿忧郁（郁闷）而已。

• dismal 本词

  Dismal usually describes external things such as weather, scenery, or situations that are dark, gloomy, and depressing; it is a formal or literary word rarely used to describe how a person personally feels.

  dismal 多用于描述天气、景象或处境等外部事物阴沉、令人沮丧，语气较为正式或文学化，很少用来形容人自身的情绪感受。

  The dismal grey skies made everyone want to stay indoors all weekend.

  阴沉的灰色天空让大家整个周末都不想出门。

• depressing

  Depressing describes something, such as news, a situation, or a place, that causes sadness or hopelessness in people who experience it; unlike blue or gloomy, it never describes a person's own mood directly.

  depressing 用来形容令人产生悲伤或绝望情绪的事物，如新闻、处境或地方等，而不会直接形容人自己此刻的心情。

  Reading the depressing news every morning left him feeling hopeless about the future.

  每天早上读这些令人沮丧的新闻，让他对未来感到绝望。

• gloomy

  Gloomy is the most general word: it can describe a person's sad mood or an atmosphere, weather, or outlook, without the strong formality of dismal or the external-cause-only sense of depressing.

  gloomy 是这组词中最通用的一个，既可以形容人的忧郁情绪，也可以形容天气、氛围等外部环境，不像 dismal 那样正式，也不像 depressing 那样只能形容引发伤感情绪的事物。

  She felt gloomy all afternoon, staring out at the gray, rainy sky.

  她整个下午都闷闷不乐，望着窗外灰蒙蒙的雨天。

Blue, dismal, depressing, and gloomy all relate to sad feelings. Blue is a person's own temporary mood, informal. Dismal describes external things, like weather, and is formal. Depressing describes something causing sadness in others. Gloomy is the most general word. Blue's color meaning is separate.

这四个词在“令人感到忧郁、沮丧”这一意义上相近，但适用对象和语域不同：blue 通常只用于描述人自己一时的心情，口语化；dismal 多形容天气、场合等外部事物，语气较正式；depressing 强调某事物使人产生悲伤或绝望的情绪；gloomy 则人和事物皆可用，最为通用。此处不比较 blue 表示“蓝色”这一颜色的意思。