dismal vs hopeless

dismal

adj
  • Causing despair; gloomy and bleak. 

  • Depressing, dreary, cheerless. 

  • Disastrous, calamitous 

  • Disappointingly inadequate. 

hopeless

adj
  • Without hope; despairing; not expecting anything positive. 

  • Giving no ground of hope; promising nothing desirable; desperate. 

  • Without talent, not skilled. 

  • Incurable. 

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