Gory
adj, name, slang ·Moderate ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 Covered with blood; very bloody.
"a gory movie"
- 2 Scandalous, and often unpleasant. informal
"Her autobiography gives all the gory details of her many divorces."
- 3 Excessively detailed, often boringly so. figuratively
"I ask the obligatory questions about how he thought she was doing and if he changed the medicine. I bite my tongue and get all the gory information. She tortures me for a while, knowing what I really want to know. Then I ask the two most important questions about the medication change. In no particular order, “Are we going to get to go to the all you can eat[…]"
- 1 covered with blood wordnet
- 2 accompanied by bloodshed wordnet
- 1 A surname.
Example
More examples""Then wars shall cease and savage times grow mild, / and Remus and Quirinus, brethren twain, / with hoary Faith and Vesta undefiled, / shall give the law. With iron bolt and chain / firm-closed the gates of Janus shall remain. / Within, the Fiend of Discord, high reclined / on horrid arms, unheeded in the fane, / bound with a hundred brazen knots behind, / and grim with gory jaws, his grisly teeth shall grind.""
Etymology
From gore + -y. Compare Middle English gorry (“muddy”), and güre, gire, girre (“gory, clotted”), from Old English gyr, gyru (“filthy, muddy”), from gor (“dirt, dung”); Old Frisian gere, iere (“muddy water”). More at gore.
Reduced form of McGorry.
Related phrases
More for "gory"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.