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# doleful

«doleful» in Mova's school dictionary: **Very sad and gloomy, looking or sounding miserable** — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples.

### part of speech

adjective (doleful; more doleful, most doleful)

### meaning for a pupil

1) Very sad and gloomy, looking or sounding miserable. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/D/doleful/#m1)

2) Causing sadness: «doleful news». [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/D/doleful/#m2)

### sense in the lessons

A feeling word in stories and poems. It paints sad faces, sad songs and sad sounds. In Alice in Wonderland the Mock Turtle sings in a doleful voice, and in The Wind in the Willows Toad is doleful in prison.

### examples

- The puppy gave me a doleful look. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/D/doleful/#x1)
- The Mock Turtle sang a doleful song. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/D/doleful/#x2)
- Toad sat in his cell looking doleful. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/D/doleful/#x3)
- A doleful bell rang across the valley. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/D/doleful/#x4)
- He told the doleful story of his lost kite. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/D/doleful/#x5)
- The rain made the day feel doleful. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/D/doleful/#x6)
- It was really a doleful garden for a princess. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/D/doleful/#x7)

### note

Adverb: dolefully. Similar: mournful, woeful, sorrowful. It sounds a little old-fashioned and literary.

### Trees and pragmatics

[Every meaning and example of «doleful» parsed by Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/D/doleful/), each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.