gloomies en · NOUN
Pronunciation
- /ˈɡlumiz/ (General-American)
- (Southern-England) audio
- (General-American) audio
- /ˈɡluːmiz/ (Received-Pronunciation)
Etymology
A fanciful plural of gloomy: gloomy + -ies (suffix forming plural nouns ending in y). Gloom is derived from Middle English *gloom, *glom, from Old English glōm (“gloaming, twilight; darkness”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰley- (“to gleam, glow, shimmer”).
Meanings
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(form-of, informal, plural) plural of gloomy
form of gloomy
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(informal, plural, plural-only) Preceded by the: gloom, despondency.
The drear departing day, the coming night, / Increase the gloomies of the tempest's sound, / And damp the last faint hope those trembling souls had found.
1825, [Richard Rotton], “Canto I”, in Herban, a Poem. In Four Cantos, London: G. B. Whittaker, […], →OCLC, stanza XXXVI, page 23:But thanks for the opening night gift. If anything can keep away the gloomies and bad luck, this will.
2004 August, Flo Fitzpatrick, chapter 29, in Ghost of a Chance, New York, N.Y.: Zebra Books, →ISBN, page 287:The Pacific Northwest is often overcast, and the Grumneys' decision to keep almost all of their trees around and in the middle of the compound meant we could be into the dark and gloomies if we were not careful.
1996, Jeffrey Prentiss, “A Cost-conscious House in North Carolina”, in Country Houses (Fine Homebuilding Great Houses), Newtown, Conn.: Taunton Press, published 1997, →ISBN, page 14:If anything happens to me I want you to promise me something. Promise me you'll make a new life for yourself. As soon as you can. You're very young. Don't get the gloomies and be a martyr, please.
1964, H[erbert] E[rnest] Bates, chapter 15, in A Moment in Time, London: Pollinger in Print, published 2006, →ISBN, page 168:He's down in the dumps because nobody wants to buy his art and his wife died, while she's got a case of the gloomies in response to public apathy for the plight of the underclass.
2018 December 12, Charles Bramesco, “A Spoonful of Nostalgia Helps the Calculated Mary Poppins Returns Go Down”, in The A.V. Club, archived from the original on 24 May 2019:[…] Chichester was too good-natured not to exert himself for the enlivenment of a handsome girl suffering under a fit of the gloomies—more especially of one who happened to be an intimate friend of his sweet Cecilia!
1840, [Catherine] Gore, chapter XI, in The Dowager; or, The New School for Scandal. […], volume II, London: Richard Bentley, […] , →OCLC, page 295: