gruesome

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   Repellently frightful and shocking; ghastly, horrific.

   He taks a ſvvirlie, auld moſs-oak, / For ſome black, grouſome Carlin; […]

2. 2
   adj

   Awful, terrible.

   The team was so unprepared that the way it played was just gruesome.

3. 3
   adj

   Of a person: filled with fear; afraid, fearful.

   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?"

4. 4
   adj

   shockingly repellent

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”)