Adjective: sombre
Comparison Forms
Synthetic
| Comparative | sombrer |
| Superlative | sombrest |
Perifrastic
Sample Sentences
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The lady led him into a sombre hallway and disappeared. A moment later the windowless chamber was illuminated by the entry of a heavenly creature emitting a radiance prone to pierce the heart of any youth exposed to it. [2015, Hermann Kauders, Before The Cock Crows, →ISBN, page 9:]
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All three parallel valleys of the Llynvi, Garw and Ogmore are much the same in physical character: the lower reaches are wooded and not unattractive, but as the railway climbs on ever-steepening grades, the hills on either hand grow barer and closer together, while in all respects the scene becomes more sombre, with the terraced, slate-roofed colliery towns and the road, railway and river all struggling for space in the narrowing defiles. [1955 July, D. S. Barrie, “Railways of the Bridgend District”, in Railway Magazine, page 449:]
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His tall and slender figure, dressed in sombre black, his hair of that peculiar reddish auburn so rarely seen, his flashing black eyes, in which a fitful fire seemed for ever burning; all combined to give something almost of a demoniac air ... [1877, The Black Band; or, The Mysteries of Midnight, page 47:]
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The dinner was silent and sombre; happily it was also short. [1845, B[enjamin] Disraeli, Sybil; or The Two Nations. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC:]
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It was a wonder that he had not been a victim of the ferocious and summary executions which marked the course of that tyranny; for Guzman had ruled the country with the sombre imbecility of political fanaticism. [1904 January 29 – October 7, Joseph Conrad, Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard, London; New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers […], published 1904, →OCLC:]
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A sombre mood, very sombre in fact, thought Hennessey, as he stood against the wall observing the procedure for the police. He had not known a mood more sombre to have previously descended on the room. [2012, Peter Turnbull, Aftermath, Severn House Publishers Ltd, →ISBN:]
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a sombre situation
Adjectives inflected like sombre
scarce,
smoove,
sombre,
wholsome,
sheene,
bolshie,
baroque,
concrete,
seveare,
comf'table,
shrewde,
'umble,
grislie,
unsubtle,
ungentle,
indiscrete,
couthie,
chavvie,
lissome,
cutesie, etc. (List truncated at 20 adjectives)
Etymology
Borrowed from French sombre (“dark”), from Old French sombre, from a verb *sombrer or Latin sub- + umbra. Compare Spanish sombra (“shade; dark part of a picture; ghost”). See: French Adjectives '
sombre'.