gruesome

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   Extremely unpleasant and shocking, usually involving death, injury, or blood.

   The film was too gruesome for me, with one violent scene after another.

2. 2
   adj

   Very bad or unpleasant in a general sense.

   The team played a gruesome match and lost by a humiliating score.

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”)

Topics