Gruesome
adj, slang ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 Repellently frightful and shocking; ghastly, horrific.
"He taks a ſvvirlie, auld moſs-oak, / For ſome black, grouſome Carlin; […]"
- 2 Awful, terrible. broadly, informal
"The team was so unprepared that the way it played was just gruesome."
- 3 Of a person: filled with fear; afraid, fearful. archaic, rare
"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?""
- 1 shockingly repellent; inspiring horror wordnet
Example
More examples"When he claims to desire eternal life, in reality man merely wishes to avoid a premature, violent or gruesome death."
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”)
Related phrases
More for "gruesome"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.