bleak vs grim

bleak

adj
  • Desolate and exposed; swept by cold winds. 

  • Without color; pale; pallid. 

  • Unhappy; cheerless; miserable; emotionally desolate. 

noun
  • A small European river fish (Alburnus alburnus), of the family Cyprinidae. 

grim

adj
  • Dismal and gloomy, cold and forbidding. 

  • Rigid and unrelenting. 

  • Ghastly or sinister. 

  • Disgusting; gross. 

verb
  • To make grim; to give a stern or forbidding aspect to. 

How often have the words bleak and grim occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )