SULLEN

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does sullen mean? 

• SULLEN (adjective)
  The adjective SULLEN has 2 senses:

1. showing a brooding ill humor

2. darkened by clouds

  Familiarity information: SULLEN used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SULLEN (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Showing a brooding ill humor

Synonyms:

dark; dour; glowering; glum; moody; morose; saturnine; sour; sullen

Context example:

a sullen crowd

Similar:

ill-natured (having an irritable and unpleasant disposition)

Derivation:

sullenness (a sullen moody resentful disposition)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Darkened by clouds

Synonyms:

heavy; lowering; sullen; threatening

Context example:

a heavy sky

Similar:

cloudy (full of or covered with clouds)

Derivation:

sullenness (a gloomy ill-tempered feeling)

 Context examples 

However, I remained silent and sullen; I was ready to faint at the very smell of him and his men.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

The clerk hurried away in horror; but, ere he had gone many paces, he heard a sudden, sullen thump, with a choking, whistling sound at the end of it.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

“I have never meant to be sullen since I came back.”

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

When I entered his room he was sitting on a stool in the centre, with his elbows on his knees, and his face was the picture of sullen discontent.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

It impressed one with its sullen determination to blow, and blow harder, and keep on blowing.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

The older man seemed numbed and dazed with a heavy, sullen expression upon his strongly-marked face.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The man’s face set in sullen defiance.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The lock yielded to her hand, and, luckily, with no sullen sound that could alarm a human being.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

The hound, under the command, "Dick! Lie down, sir!" had gone up the steps and lain down to one side of the porch, still growling and keeping a sullen watch on the intruder.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

But, sir, as it grew dark, the wind rose: it blew yesterday evening, not as it blows now—wild and high—but 'with a sullen, moaning sound' far more eerie.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)