sullen

adj

1. Having a brooding ill temper; sulky.

   “Still she entreats, and prettily entreats, / For to a pretty ear she tunes her tale; / Still is he sullen, still he lours and frets, / ‘Twixt crimson shame and anger ashy-pale;”

   “And sullen I forsook the imperfect feast.”

   “2007, Steven Wilson, "Normal", Porcupine Tree, Nil Recurring. Sullen and bored the kids stay / And in this way wish away each day”

2. Gloomy; dismal; foreboding.

   “a sullen atmosphere”

   “Our solemn hymns to sullen dirges change;”

   “He added not; and Satan bowing low / His gray diſſimulation, diſappear'd / Into thin Air diffuſ'd: for now began / Night with her ſullen wing to double-ſhade / The Deſert; Fowls in thir clay neſts were couch't; / And now wild Beaſts came forth the woods to roam.”

   “No cheerful breeze this sullen region knows, / The dreaded East is all the wind that blows.”

3. Sluggish; slow.

   “The larger [stream] was placid, and even sullen, in its course.”

   “When ends life's transient dream, / when death’s cold, sullen stream / shall o'er me roll,”

4. (obsolete)Mischievous; malignant; unpropitious.

   “Such sullen planets at my birth did shine, / They threaten every Fortune mixt with mine.”

   “she meets again / The savage murderer's sullen gaze,”

5. (obsolete)Obstinate; intractable.

   “Things are as sullen as we are, and will be what they are whatever we think of them.”

noun

1. (archaic)One who is solitary, or lives alone; a hermit.

   “He sit neither with seint Johan, / Symond ne Jude, / Ne with maydenes ne with martires, / Confessours ne wydewes; / But by hymself as a soleyn, / And served on erthe.”

2. (in-plural)Sullen feelings or manners; sulks; moroseness.

   “And let them die that age and sullens have;”

   “If she be not sick of the sullens, I see not the least infirmity in her.”

   “[M]y brother […] charged my desire of being excused coming down to sullens, because a certain person had been spoken against, upon whom, as he supposed, my fancy ran.”

verb

1. (obsolete)To make sullen.

   “The idle man is like the dumb jack in a virginal: while all the other dance out a winning music, this, like a member out of joint, sullens the whole body, with an ill disturbing laziness.”