Gruesome

/ˈɡɹuːsəm/ · adjective

Meaning

Repellently frightful and shocking; ghastly, horrific..

Definitions by Sense

1. Repellently frightful and shocking; ghastly, horrific.
2. (informal, loosely) Awful, terrible.
3. (archaic, rare) Of a person: filled with fear; afraid, fearful.

Example Sentences

He taks a ſvvirlie, auld moſs-oak, / For ſome black, grouſome Carlin; […]

There's a wheen German horse doun at Glasgow yonder; they ca' their commander Wittybody, or some sic name, though he's as grave and grewsome an auld Dutchman as e'er I saw.

With many a grausome shape unutterable, / Limn'd were the cavernous sepulchral walls; […]

He has taken a bride / To his gruesome side, / That's as fair as himself is bold: […]

[T]hey packed him [a dead duck] and sealed him up in brown paper, and put him in the cupboard of an unoccupied study, where he was found in the holidays by the matron, a grewsome body.

[T]he dim, mysterious half-light of the cellar falling in a grewsome way upon the misshapen bulk of a Chinese deity in the background, […]

"Fallen in love! Who is there to fall in love with a man like me? Look at my shadow, Leonard." It was a gruesome-looking shadow, with high back, and head thrust forward.

True, there were the usual night-sounds of the country—the whir of night-birds, the buzzing of insects, the barking of distant dogs, the mellow lowing of far-off kine—but these didn't seem to break the stillness, they only intensified it, and added a grewsome melancholy to it into the bargain.

Synonyms for gruesome

Antonyms for gruesome

Related Words

Word Forms

• gruesomer
• more gruesome
• gruesomest
• most gruesome
• grewsome

Usage Notes

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

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