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Chris -- 2018-04-11
“Gloom” started out as a verb in M.E., from Scandinavian roots meaning “to look displeased or somber”. To be gloomy in the sense of melancholic was recorded in the late 16th c. So gloom was initially associated with mood, and not with gloom of night. Glum, which is now uniquely related to humour, I think, came initially from a verb for “to become dark”. It then came to be closely related in meaning to gloom. So there is a fetal attraction between them. Glummy weather is a kind of flounder, I guess. There is a difference between being gloomy (dark and depressing; a question of outlook) and being glum (unhappy, down in the dumps; negative “inlook”). Gloom can be applied to weather independently of emotions whereas glum cannot. I don’t think it’s a simple spelling mistake. That would be glumy.
About 40 hits for “glummy weather”, most from personal blogs.
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cuddling with someone i care about in a rainstorm, dark and glummy weather
AK weather forecast
Monday Barrow’s glummy weather will possibly break as the coastal low disapears and the high over the arctic spreads south.
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Glumy would indeed be odd. (Spumy? Fumy? Do we have other words spelt on that pattern?)
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Doubled consonants after “long†vowels are surprisingly common. E.g. dinning room (and of course the converse, after diner ), shinny <= shiny, tinniest <= tiniest, dully <= duly, starring <= staring, ridding <= riding , and many more.
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Still, I’d suspect this is pronounced “glummy†rather than “gloomyâ€, though I would tend to see it more as a sort of reasonable productive extension of the meaning of “glum†and the “X-y †pattern than as anything very close to an eggcorn. “Grumpy weather†gets ±1800 ghits, and this would be a closely similar structure.
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We already discussed drismal weather didn’t we? The kind of thing you get on a gleary day, when the outlook is glim, and the mizzle falls softly?
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(From Mexico where it’s a beautiful day and my favorite 5.6 km-high volcano is out in full glory.)
Last edited by DavidTuggy (2010-03-01 14:40:11)
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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David T wrote:
Glumy would indeed be odd. (Spumy? Fumy? Do we have other words spelt on that pattern?)
Well, does “rheumy” count? And then there’s “brumy,” a rare word meaning “foggy, misty” that’s so rare I was worried my memory was making it up—the OED doesn’t have a reference. But books.google.com does, including a recent use in the 2001 novel Emotionally Weird by Kate Atkinson.
DT also wrote:
We already discussed drismal weather didn’t we?
Yes, you mentioned that it was a Bay Area usage—a claim I’m still feverishly working to confirm.
I loved this:
The kind of thing you get on a gleary day, when the outlook is glim, and the mizzle falls softly?
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patschwieterman wrote re drismal :
Yes, you mentioned that it was a Bay Area usage—a claim I’m still feverishly working to confirm.
My source was a dentist who (over 20 years ago now) had just used the word (in Tucson of all unlikely places) and said he had picked it up in that area.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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