SULLENNESS

Pronunciation (US):

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does sullenness mean? 

• SULLENNESS (noun)
  The noun SULLENNESS has 2 senses:

1. a gloomy ill-tempered feeling

2. a sullen moody resentful disposition

  Familiarity information: SULLENNESS used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SULLENNESS (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A gloomy ill-tempered feeling

Classified under:

Nouns denoting feelings and emotions

Synonyms:

glumness; moroseness; sullenness

Hypernyms ("sullenness" is a kind of...):

moodiness (a sullen gloomy feeling)

Derivation:

sullen (darkened by clouds)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A sullen moody resentful disposition

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

moroseness; sourness; sulkiness; sullenness

Hypernyms ("sullenness" is a kind of...):

ill nature (a disagreeable, irritable, or malevolent disposition)

Derivation:

sullen (showing a brooding ill humor)

 Context examples 

You have withdrawn yourself in your sullenness to your own room.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

“I think you might have warned me,” returned the other with a touch of sullenness.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

Not a word more would he say, but sat in his implacable sullenness as indifferent to me as though I had not been in the room at all.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

Some days since: nay, I can number them—four; it was last Monday night, a singular mood came over me: one in which grief replaced frenzy—sorrow, sullenness.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

All sullenness and defiance disappeared, and he talked sociably with his captors, and even with flashes of his old-time wit.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

She had not been able to speak; and, on entering the carriage, sunk back for a moment overcome—then reproaching herself for having taken no leave, making no acknowledgment, parting in apparent sullenness, she looked out with voice and hand eager to shew a difference; but it was just too late.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

He was a coward, from head to foot; and showed his dastardly nature through his sullenness and mortification, as much as at any time of his mean life.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)