Word Origin & History
dreary
O.E. dreorig "sorrowful," originally "cruel, bloody," from dreor "gore, blood," from (ge)dreosan (pp. droren) "fall, decline, fail," from W.Gmc. *dreuzas (cf. O.N. dreyrigr "gory, bloody," and more remotely, Ger. traurig "sad, sorrowful"). The word has lost its original sense of "dripping blood." Sense of "dismal, gloomy" first recorded 1667 in "Paradise Lost," but O.E. had a related verb drysmian "become gloomy."