DISMAL  , an

adjective meaning dreary, gloomy, and so a name given to stretches of swampy land on the east coast of the United States, as the Dismal Swamp in Virginia and North Carolina . The derivation has been much discussed . In the early examples of the use the word is a substantive, especially in the expression " in the dismal," i.e. in the dismal time or days . Later it became adjectival, especially in combination with " days." It has been connected with " decimal," med . Latin decimalis, belonging to a tithe or tenth, and thus the " dismal days " are the unpleasant days connected with the extortion and oppression of exacting payment of tithes . According to the New English Dictionary, quoting Professor W . W . Skeat, " dismal " is derived, through an Anglo-Fr. dis mal, from the Lat. dies mali, evil or unpropitious days . This Anglo-French expression, explained as les mal jours, is found in a MS. of Rauf de Linham's Art de Kalender, 1256 . These days of evil omen were known as Dies Aegyptiaci (Du Cange, Glossarium, s.v.) or Egyptian days, either as having been instituted by Egyptian astrologers or with reference to the " ten plagues "; so Chaucer, " I trowe hit was in the dismal, That were the ten woundes of Egipte " (Book of the Duchesse, 1206) . There were two such days in each month . See Skeat, Trans .

Philol .

Soc . (1888), p . 2, and note on the line in the " Book of the Duchesse," The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, vol. i . (1894) .