Examples of joylessness

• He exuded a certain joylessness.

• What is most striking is the joylessness of this book.

• You can hardly blame Pip for his joylessness.

• The girls have a pensive dignity as though they are pondering the burdens and joylessness of a future to be spent as caryatids.

• Sometimes it is mere passive joylessness and dreariness, discouragement, dejection, lack of taste and zest and spring.