From Middle English bleke (also bleche, whence the English doublet bleach (“pale, bleak”)), and bleike (due to Old Norse), and earlier Middle English blak, blac (“pale, wan”), from Old English blǣc, blǣċ, blāc (“bleak, pale, pallid”) and Old Norse bleikr (“pale, whitish”), all from Proto-Germanic *blaikaz (“pale, shining”). Cognate with Dutch bleek (“pale, wan, pallid”), Low German blek (“pale”), German bleich (“pale, wan, sallow”), Danish bleg (“pale”), Swedish blek (“pale, pallid”), Norwegian Bokmål bleik, blek (“pale”), Norwegian Nynorsk bleik (“pale”), Faroese bleikur (“pale”), Icelandic bleikur (“pale, pink”).
1
Without color; pale; pallid.
When she came out she looked as pale and as bleak as one that were laid out dead.1563 March 30 (Gregorian calendar), John Foxe, Actes and Monuments of These Latter and Perillous Dayes, […], London: […] Iohn Day, […], →OCLC:
2
Desolate and exposed; swept by cold winds.
a bleak and bare rock
a bleak, crater-pocked moonscape
4 more examples
They escaped across the bleak landscape.
We hiked across open meadows and climbed bleak mountains.
Wastes too bleak to rear / The common growth of earth, the foodful ear.1793, William Wordsworth, Descriptive Sketches:
At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach, / A fisherman stood aghast, / To see the form of a maiden fair, / Lashed close to a drifting mast.1840 January 10, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “[Ballads.] w:The Wreck of the Hesperus.”, in Ballads and Other Poems, 2nd edition, Cambridge, Mass.: […] John Owen, published 1842, →OCLC, stanza 20, page 47:
Downtown Albany felt bleak that February after the divorce.
A bleak future is in store for you.
4 more examples
The news is bleak.
The survey paints a bleak picture.
But the bleakest Utopia of all, the very first of the Unutopias, had come from Wells long before that.1978, The Spectator, volume 240, number 1, page 25:
The industrial shitscape of Los Angeles gave way to something even bleaker as I passed out of lonely Riverside into the wide-open range of horse stables and twisted trees and spinning giant wind turbines outside of Indio.2011, Jesse James, American Outlaw, page 331:
Etymology From Middle English bleke (“small river fish, bleak, blay”), perhaps an alteration (due to Old English blǣc (“bright”) or Old Norse bleikja) of Old English blǣġe (“bleak, blay, gudgeon”); or perhaps from a diminutive of Middle English *bleye (“blay”), equivalent to blay + -ock or blay + -kin. See blay.
1
A small European river fish (Alburnus alburnus), of the family Cyprinidae.