adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a bleak/gloomy/grim picture (= giving the impression that something is or will be bad )
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The report paints a bleak picture of the economy.
bleak/grim/dark (= without anything to make you feel hopeful )
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The theatre is losing money and its future looks bleak.
face a bleak/grim etc future
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Many pensioners face a bleak future.
gloomy/grim/bleak
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Many Britons face the grim prospect of having their home repossessed.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADVERB
as
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Of course, the picture may not have been quite as bleak as all this might suggest.
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The room seemed to sum up his life: his future seemed as bleak as this cubicle.
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And doubting her husband on this point, she wondered if Timothy Gedge's future was as bleak as he had forecast.
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Prospects for the weeks and months ahead look about as bleak .
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The zoo curators at the conference had news that was almost as bleak .
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The situation in Ulster in 1985 was as bleak as ever.
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His face was as bleak as the frost.
even
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By the end of the week the prospect was even bleaker .
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The next cluster of ugly barracks surrounded by barbed wire would be even bleaker because it was unfamiliar.
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For Ricardo Ellcock, the picture is even bleaker .
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The bottom line is even bleaker .
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To the outward eye he was austere, even bleak .
very
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At the turn of the century, things looked very bleak for the Rottweiler.
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I wanted to be a newspaper man, but chances looked very bleak in those days for blacks to think about that.
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In 1950 the economic picture had looked very bleak .
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We should now have a very bleak and bare countryside.
■ NOUN
future
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But as she lapped up the five-star treatment on the champagne Concorde flight, angry pensioners were facing a bleak future .
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Like many of the black artists he mimicked, Presley grew up poor and with a seemingly bleak future .
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His marriage has broken up, he rarely sees his teenage daughter and he faces a bleak future .
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Now the hard working couple say they face a miserable Christmas and a bleak future .
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They say the airlift has brought new hope to people who would otherwise have faced a bleak future .
landscape
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After another mile, Chapel-le-Dale is reached, an oasis of greenery in a bleak landscape .
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The bleak landscape wouldn't be different at all.
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The bleak landscape made Zen think back to his dream, to his own father's fate.
picture
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But here, too, recent analysis presents a bleaker picture than that of the traditional liberal view.
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Doctors stop short of saying the disease is always fatal, but medical literature paints a bleak picture .
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He writes: This seems to be an unnecessarily bleak picture .
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The imagery and language help conjure up the bleak picture of death in the two poems.
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He remembered their talk together and the bleak picture she had painted for him of her life.
prospect
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Myriad receptions and reunions could not disguise the bleak prospects for job hunters.
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It may well be this bleak prospect that has spawned the flurry of books about Yiddish in recent years.
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The bleak prospect of the labour camps, slavery in Siberia?
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
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He gazed around the empty, bleak little room in despair.
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His prospects of finding another job are bleak .
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It looks pretty bleak for avocado growers here.
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Many people were facing a financially bleak Christmas.
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Prospects of success looked bleak as the opposition scored the first two goals.
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the bleakest year of the Depression
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The chief executive said that the company was looking at a bleak future.
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The future looked bleak for the Democratic party.
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The snow-covered coast looked bleak and uninviting.
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The wild landscape was bleak and bare.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
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For savers, the picture probably will get bleaker.
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It could have shared the owner's adventures and vicissitudes, occupied his leisure hours, cheered his bleaker moments.
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Maybe in the bleak light of dawn Kathy arranged a pile of twigs on the beach.
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Only an occasional ferry boat makes a last, bleak journey across the river to Birkenhead and the Wirral.
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The Chicago settings are authentically bleak and the plotting subtle and incisive.
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Things began to look pretty bleak , from the standpoint of building a career.
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This is the wildest, bleakest and least densely populated area of Ulthuan.