gruesome
/ˈɡɹusəm/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.27 in modern English
11
Scrabble Score
8
Letters
2
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Repellently frightful and shocking; ghastly, horrific.
Example Sentences
- "He taks a ſvvirlie, auld moſs-oak, / For ſome black, grouſome Carlin; […]"
- "There's a wheen German horse doun at Glasgow yonder; they ca' their commander Wittybody, or some sic name, though he's as grave and grewsome an auld Dutchman as e'er I saw."
- "With many a grausome shape unutterable, / Limn'd were the cavernous sepulchral walls; […]"
- "He has taken a bride / To his gruesome side, / That's as fair as himself is bold: […]"
- "[T]hey packed him [a dead duck] and sealed him up in brown paper, and put him in the cupboard of an unoccupied study, where he was found in the holidays by the matron, a grewsome body."
- "[T]he dim, mysterious half-light of the cellar falling in a grewsome way upon the misshapen bulk of a Chinese deity in the background, […]"
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”)
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈɡɹusəm/
- British English: /ˈɡɹuːsəm/
Usage
Inflected Forms
gruesomer (comparative)
more gruesome (comparative)
gruesomest (superlative)
most gruesome (superlative)
grewsome (alternative)