"dismal rate" is a correct and usable phrase in written English.
It is typically used to describe a very low or poor level or amount of something. Example: "The company's profits have been declining at a dismal rate, causing concerns among investors."
At the dismal rate subways are going, we'll take all the energy we can get.
She says that better policing, including tackling the city's dismal rate of solving murders, is a top priority.
Eoin Ó Broin, the Sinn Féin housing spokesman, received the information in response to a parliamentary question and described it as a "dismal rate of return".
But even that dismal rate has become worse, with 1% of girls born in 2001, and almost 0% of girls born after 2001, having been immunized3,6,7.
The N.F.L. says only 50 percent of players wear lower-body pads, a dismal rate considering the agony a helmet-to-hipbone hit can cause.
This dismal rate of job creation raises the distinct possibility that America's recovery from the latest recession may also be jobless.
That show receives a dismal rating in the "Compendium".
Students also gave a dismal rating to its careers services department.
He says response rates to these targeted mailings are better than the dismal rates for the usual direct-mail campaigns.
This week, the National Institutes of Health will hold a conference in Bethesda, Md., about the country's dismal rates of vaginal birth after Caesarean, or VBAC (pronounced VEE-back), which have plummeted since 1996.
As for his boss's dismal rating on moral authority, Mr. Lockhart said, "I suspect that that's more a reaction to reading the tabloids than a fair reading of history".
