dismal

Etymology

From Middle English dismal, originally a noun meaning “unlucky days”,^[1][2] borrowed from Anglo-Norman dismal (mid-13th century),^[3][4] apparently from Old French dis mal “evil days”,^[5][3] from Medieval Latin diēs malī (“evil days, unlucky days”),^[1][5] from Latin diēs “days” + malī, plural of malus “bad”.^[1][3]

Medieval calendars marked two days of each month as unlucky,^[2][3] supposedly following the calculations of Egyptian astrologers.^[3] The word is mentioned in 1256 as the English or Anglo-French name for these days;^[5] once day was added (dismal days), it came to be used as an adjective,^[5] and by the 1580s it had been extended to “gloomy, dreary, cheerless”.^[3]

References

1. [1] [2] [3] The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Boston: Houghton Mifflin
2. [1] [2] Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
3. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] Harper, Douglas, Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. [1] Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
5. [1] [2] [3] [4] Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press