Grotesque

/ɡɹəʊˈtɛsk/ · adjective

Meaning

Distorted and unnatural in shape or size; abnormal, especially in a hideous way..

Definitions by Sense

1. Distorted and unnatural in shape or size; abnormal, especially in a hideous way.
2. Disgusting or otherwise viscerally revolting.
3. (typography) Sans serif.
4. A style of ornamentation characterized by fanciful combinations of intertwined forms.
5. Anything grotesque.
6. (typography) A sans serif typeface.
7. (transitive) To make grotesque.

Example Sentences

The chimney-piece was of party-coloured marble, covered with figures, some of whose faces were beautiful, but generally running off into those grotesque combinations which characterised the peculiar taste of their time.

A Libyan longing took us, and we would have chosen, if we could, to bear a strand of grotesque beads, or a handful of brazen gauds, and traffic them for some sable maid with crisp locks, whom, uncoffling from the captive train beside the desert, we should make to do our general housework forever, through the right of lawful purchase.

Some of the vehicles are, indeed, taxis, but all of them are unoccupied, and most have their doors left open. There are colossally tall darkened figures stalking down the streets, so dark and slender that Wheeler actually fails to notice them. There is screaming, a grotesque, awful screaming coming from many human mouths, coming from somewhere down the main road. But that's the only way he can go.

Trump’s grotesque and incomprehensible fondness for Putin makes the details of any deal highly dangerous for Europe and the NATO alliance, founded to confront Russia.

Obese and largely unintelligible, Don Vito represents a working-class white male grotesque, the picture of excess.

He’s also the new character from Sacha Baron Cohen, the man behind Ali G, Borat and Brüno: that unholy trinity of comic grotesques that told us a lot more about ourselves than we’d like to admit.

Why, when I saw that bestiality— / So beyond all brute-beast imagining, / That when, to point the moral at the close, / Poor Salabaccho, just to show how fair / Was ‘Reconciliation,’ stripped her charms, / That exhibition simply bade us breathe, / Seemed something healthy and commendable / After obscenity grotesqued so much / It slunk away revolted at itself.

This is to grotesque Dante, not to translate him.

Synonyms for grotesque

Antonyms for grotesque

Related Words

Word Forms

• grotesquer
• more grotesque
• grotesquest
• most grotesque
• grotesques
• grotesquing
• grotesqueing
• grotesqued

Usage Notes

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