gruesome
or grew·some
[groo-suh m]
- causing great horror; horribly repugnant; grisly: the site of a gruesome murder.
- full of or causing problems; distressing: a gruesome day at the office.
Origin of gruesome
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Examples from the Web for gruesome
Contemporary Examples
A shortage of pentobarbital has forced some states to improvise, often with gruesome consequences.
Armed with the gruesome tools of the trade, Kaye and Armstrong did the dirty work before students arrived.
Gupta has to entertain, as much as inform, around a gruesome situation.
He said a perfect example is a gruesome image of a teenage girl whose head has been blown off.
Reports describe a gruesome scene of “almost unspeakable horror” with “bodies everywhere, organs splayed out.”
Historical Examples
It is a gruesome doctrine, that a child who kills himself does not really die.
City of Endless NightMilo Hastings
The interior of the ship faded to its gruesome green darkness.
The man and woman were chopping at the viscous, gruesome head.
Down by his feet the gruesome mangled corpses were the size of children.
The World BeyondRaymond King Cummings
It had all the imperfections of unskilful improvisation and its subject was gruesome.
An Outcast of the IslandsJoseph Conrad
gruesome
- inspiring repugnance and horror; ghastly
Word Origin
C16: originally Northern English and Scottish; see grue, -some 1
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
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Word Origin and History for gruesome
adj.
1560s, with -some (1) + Middle English gruen "feel horror, shudder" (c.1300); not recorded in Old English or Norse, possibly from Middle Dutch gruwen or Middle Low German gruwen "shudder with fear" (cf. German grausam "cruel"), or from a Scandinavian source (cf. Danish grusom "cruel," grue "to dread," though others hold that these are Low German loan-words). One of the many Scottish words popularized in England by Scott's novels.
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper