A pervasive low, dark mood or atmosphere.
A pervasive low, dark mood or atmosphere — and, literally, darkness or a shadowy place.
The most “environmental” of the family: it merges literal darkness with a pervasive low mood. Even as emotion it names a diffuse, settling cheerlessness that can hang over a person, a home, or a whole city (a heaviness that descends and lingers) rather than a sharp personal pang — often shared and ambient, where dejection and despondency belong to an individual's spirits. It implies no necessary loss of hope (unlike despair); heavier and darker than the wistful, pensive melancholy.
A pervasive low, cheerless mood — often shared and atmospheric.
The emotional sense (1744) is the latest layer of the word.
Partial or total darkness; a dark, shadowy place (“disappeared into the gloom”).
This darkness sense (first in Milton, 1629) actually predates the mood sense.
1590s, originally Scottish “a sullen look,” probably from the verb gloom “look sullen” (late 14c.), of uncertain origin. Not related to Old English glom “twilight.” Extended from “sullen look” to darkness, then to mood.
A well-documented chain: “a sullen look” (1590s) → “darkness, obscurity” (1629, in Milton) → “melancholy, cheerless heaviness of mind” (1744). The emotional sense is the latest layer. No reliable recent-generation shift.