Dictionary

gruesome en · ADJ

Pronunciation

(Southern-England) audio
/ˈɡɹuːsm̩/ (Received-Pronunciation)
/ˈɡɹuːsəm/ (Received-Pronunciation)
/ˈɡɹusəm/ (General-American)

Etymology

From grue (“(archaic except Northern England, Scotland) to be frightened; to shudder with fear”) + -some (suffix meaning ‘characterized by some specific condition or quality, usually to a considerable degree’ forming adjectives and nouns), probably popularized by the Scottish novelist and poet Walter Scott (1771–1832): see, for example, the 1816 quotation. cognates * Danish grusom (“cruel; horrible”) * Middle Dutch grousaem, grusaem (modern Dutch gruwzaam (“cruel; gruesome”)) * Middle High German grûsam, grûwesam (modern German grausam (“cruel”)) * Norwegian Bokmål grusom (“cruel; horrible”)

Meanings

Repellently frightful and shocking; ghastly, horrific.
- With many a grausome shape unutterable, / Limn'd were the cavernous sepulchral walls; […] 1848, [Edward Bulwer-Lytton], “Book V”, in King Arthur. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, stanza XLIX, page 219:
- He has taken a bride / To his gruesome side, / That's as fair as himself is bold: […] 1855, Robert Browning, “A Lovers’ Quarrel”, in Men and Women […], volume I, London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC, stanza 5, page 9:
- He taks a ſvvirlie, auld moſs-oak, / For ſome black, grouſome Carlin; […] 1785 (date written), Robert Burns, “Halloween”, in Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect. […], 2nd edition, volume I, Edinburgh: […] T[homas] Cadell, […], and William Creech, […], published 1793, →OCLC, stanza XXIII, page 189:
- If ugliness be an attribute of nature, then the buzzard is its expression incarnate. […] Creeping up a little distance from the scene, I quietly hid in a great drift of leaves and corn-blades that the winds had piled in the corner of the old worm fence, and became an interested spectator at the strangest, gruesomest assemblage ever seen,—a buzzards' banquet. 1897 October, Dallas Lore Sharp, “A Buzzards’ Banquet”, in Lippincott’s Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, volume LX, Philadelphia, Pa.; London: J[oshua] B[allinger] Lippincott Co., →OCLC, pages 565–566:
- There are people that ship off far gruesomer figures / in sermons, in art, and in literature— […] 1892, Henrik Ibsen, translated by William Archer and Charles Archer, edited by William Archer, Peer Gynt: A Dramatic Poem […] (Ibsen’s Famous Prose Dramas; 6), London: Walter Scott, […]; New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, […], →OCLC, Act V, scene x, page 268:
- "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. 1878, Walter Besant, James Rice, “A Friendly Chat”, in By Celia’s Arbour. A Tale of Portsmouth Town. […], volume II, London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, […], →OCLC, page 218:
- [White House press secretary] Jay Carney said that the US was considering whether to release photos of [Osama] bin Laden after he was killed on Sunday but that the photos were "gruesome" and could be inflammatory. 2011 May 4, “Bin Laden ‘was Unarmed’ when Shot Dead”, in Al Jazeera, archived from the original on 26 Jan 2025:
- [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, […] 1874 September, Bret Harte, “Wan Lee, the Pagan”, in Tales of the Argonauts, and Other Sketches, Boston, Mass.: James R[ipley] Osgood and Company (late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co.), published 1876, →OCLC, page 85:
- In the middle of the floor lay a skeleton, every vestige of flesh gone from the bones to which still clung the mildewed and mouldered remnants of what had once been clothing. Upon the bed lay a similar grewsome thing, but smaller, while in a tiny cradle nearby was a third, a wee mite of a skeleton. 1912 October, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “Tarzan of the Apes”, in The All-Story, New York, N.Y.: Frank A. Munsey Co., →OCLC; republished as “Jungle Battles”, in Tarzan of the Apes, New York, N.Y.: A[lbert] L[evi] Burt Company, June 1914, →OCLC, page 69:
- 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. 1816, Jedadiah Cleishbotham [pseudonym; Walter Scott], chapter XII, in Tales of My Landlord, […], volume I (The Black Dwarf), Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne and Co.] for William Blackwood, […]; London: John Murray, […], →OCLC, page 259:
- 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. 1889, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], “The Battle of the Sand-belt”, in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, New York, N.Y.: Charles L. Webster & Company, →OCLC, page 560:
- [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. 1857, [Thomas Hughes], “The Bird-Fanciers”, in Tom Brown’s School Days. […], Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Macmillan & Co., →OCLC, part II, page 303:
(broadly, informal) Awful, terrible.
- The team was so unprepared that the way it played was just gruesome.
(archaic, rare) Of a person: filled with fear; afraid, fearful.
- Some of his [Nathaniel Hawthorne's] companions, either then or afterwards, took, I believe, rather a gruesome view of his want of articulate enthusiasm, and accused him of coming to the place as a sort of intellectual vampire, for purely psychological purposes. 1879, Henry James, Junr., “Brook Farm and Concord”, in John Morley, editor, Hawthorne (English Men of Letters; 13), London: Macmillan and Co., →OCLC, page 87:
- Then says I to myself,—"John Ridd, these trees, and pools, and lonesome rocks, and setting of the sunlight, are making a gruesome coward of thee. Shall I go back to my mother so, and be called her fearless boy?" 1869, R[ichard] D[oddridge] Blackmore, chapter VII, in Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor. […], volume I, London: Sampson Low, Son, & Marston, […], →OCLC, page 82:

Forms

Spelling	Features	Labels	Source
most gruesome	Degree=Sup		lexicographic
gruesomest	Degree=Sup		lexicographic
gruesomer	Degree=Cmp		lexicographic
more gruesome	Degree=Cmp		lexicographic
grewsome		alternative	lexicographic

Translations (64)

mi tūpō (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · nl afgrijselijk (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · pl przerażający (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · pl odpychający (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · sh grȏzan (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · pdt grausom (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · oc òrre (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · da uhyggelig (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · kk жантүршігерлік (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · cmn 可怕 (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · ga gráiniúil (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · fi kaamea (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · ja 身の毛もよだつ (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · pt horrendo (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · es horripilante (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · cs děsný (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · eo terura (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · gl truculento (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · oc orrible (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · ru омерзи́тельный (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · el απαίσιος (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · it orribile (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · fi kauhea (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · sv ohygglig (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · sh гро̑зан (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · ro groaznic (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · cy arswydus (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · es truculento (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · pt pavoroso (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · da makaber (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · cmn 恐怖 (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · tr korkunç (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · sv fasansfull (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · it raccapricciante (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · pl straszliwy (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · de grauenhaft (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · cy erchyll (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · nl afschuwelijk (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · pt medonho (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · cs hrůzný (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · uk оги́дний (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · ar مُرَوِّع (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · ms mengerikan (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · bg ужасен (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · fr horrible (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · de grauenvoll (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · el φρικτός (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · nl gruwzaam (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · ca paorós (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · bg страшен (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · nl angstaanjagend (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · nl gruwelijk (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · gl repelente (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · mi wetiweti (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · pl okropny (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · cs příšerný (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · ru отврати́тельный (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · pl straszny (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · ru ужа́сный (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · no grusom (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · uk жахли́вий (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · pl makabryczny (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · es espantoso (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific) · nl verschrikkelijk (repellently frightful and shocking — see also ghastly, horrific)

wikipedia: Walter Scott

gruesome en · ADJ

Pronunciation

Etymology

Meanings

Forms

Antonyms

Deriveds

Synonyms

Translations (64)