dark and dank
- adjective
:
oscuro y húmedo
- The atmosphere is dark and dank with a terrifying feeling of hopelessness as you and your team make it to every new safehouse in a worse state than before.
Examples
-
The basement was dark and dank, making it an unpleasant place to spend time.
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It's all dark and dank and musty and smells like tobacco.
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The sun passed behind a cloud, the forest became dark and dank, then gave way to a foggy meadow.
Fiction book (1993) -
Being dark and dank was bad, and it was just too easy to imagine some horrible beast down there, all gleaming eyes, snatching claws, and sharp fangs, that liked nothing better than to kill and eat little kids.
Blog text (31) -
As we walk through the dark and dank corridors of the old barracks that squat over much of the excavation site, I get a glimpse of the gargantuan task.
Academic text (2005) -
After weeks of rain, the once bright room felt dark and dank due to the humidity.
-
The cave was dark and dank, filled with the smell of damp earth.
Synonyms
18
6.2
An unpleasantly damp, cool place that smells musty
11
2.7
Cold and damp in a way that feels unpleasant
8
5.0
Cold wet weather that feels unpleasant
Antonyms
How Damp
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'gloomy and unpleasantly damp' is directly derived from combining 'dark' (very little light) with 'dank' (damp, musty); the conjunction 'and' simply coordinates these descriptive adjectives. This compositional, adjective+and+adjective pattern is common cross-linguistically and therefore a B1 learner who knows the constituent words would readily infer the MWE's meaning.
Etymology
Dark and dank comes from the clear image of old cellars and tunnels that were very dark, with no light, and very dank, meaning cold and wet. That's why the phrase now describes places that feel 'gloomy and damp'.