I'm reading Dickens's Bleak House. It occurred to me that I had no idea of "bleak"s etymology.
bleak1

PRONUNCIATION: blk
ADJECTIVE: Inflected forms: bleak·er, bleak·est
1a. Gloomy and somber: “Life in the Aran Islands has always been bleak and difficult” (John Millington Synge). b. Providing no encouragement; depressing: a bleak prospect. 2. Cold and cutting; raw: bleak winds of the North Atlantic. 3. Exposed to the elements; unsheltered and barren: the bleak, treeless regions of the high Andes.
ETYMOLOGY: Middle English bleik, pale, from Old Norse bleikr, white. See bhel-1 in Appendix I.
OTHER FORMS: bleakly —ADVERB
bleakness —NOUN

So the old Norse word was white, and the English took the white to be pale...and then over the many years the pale came to mean sombre. It's as though there were a cover of snow in the Norse word that the English lifted up to reveal the sombre grays and browns of winter beneath.