Grotesquerie

//ɡɹəʊˈtɛskəɹi// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The quality of being grotesque or macabre. countable, uncountable

    "She wakened in sharp panic, bewildered by the grotesquerie of some half-remembered dream in contrast with the harshness of inclement fact, drowsily realizing that since she had fallen asleep it had come on to rain smartly out of a shrouded sky."

  2. 2
    ludicrous or incongruous unnaturalness or distortion wordnet
  3. 3
    A genre of horror literature that was popular in the early 20th century, and practiced by writers such as Ambrose Bierce and Fritz Leiber. countable, uncountable

Example

More examples

"She wakened in sharp panic, bewildered by the grotesquerie of some half-remembered dream in contrast with the harshness of inclement fact, drowsily realizing that since she had fallen asleep it had come on to rain smartly out of a shrouded sky."

Etymology

From French grotesquerie.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.