Grim

/ɡɹɪm/ · adjective

Meaning

Dismal and gloomy, cold and forbidding..

Definitions by Sense

1. Dismal and gloomy, cold and forbidding.
2. Rigid and unrelenting.
3. Ghastly or sinister.
4. Disgusting; gross.
5. (obsolete) Fierce, cruel, furious.
6. (transitive, rare) To make grim; to give a stern or forbidding aspect to.
7. (MLE, slang, probably a fashionable word around 2006, now dated) A promiscuous woman.
8. (obsolete) Anger, wrath.

Example Sentences

Life was grim in many northern industrial towns.

Developments were markedly different in the Soviet zone, but ultimately ended in perhaps an even grimmer dead end: that of SED leader Walter Ulbricht’s thoroughly Stalinized German Democratic Republic (GDR).

Cristiana Paşca Palmer, the executive secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, said the destruction of the world’s biggest rainforest was a grim reminder that a fresh approach needed to stabilise the climate and prevent ecosystems from declining to a point of no return, with dire consequences for humanity.

It's been a grim start to the year.

His grim determination enabled him to win.

A grim castle overshadowed the village.

There was, I thought, a trace of very profound and very genuine irony in the timbre—not the flashy, meaninglessly jaunty pseudo-irony of the callow "sophisticate," which Derby had habitually affected, but something grim, basic, pervasive and potentially evil.

In movie terms, it suggests Paul Verhoeven in Robocop/Starship Troopers mode, an R-rated bloodbath where the grim spectacle of children murdering each other on television is bread-and-circuses for the age of reality TV, enforced by a totalitarian regime to keep the masses at bay.

Synonyms for grim

Antonyms for grim

Related Words

Word Forms

• grimmer
• grimmest
• grims
• grimming
• grimmed

Usage Notes

Choose a synonym only when it preserves the intended meaning, tone, and grammar of the full sentence.

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