grisly
1 Americanadjective
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causing a shudder or feeling of horror; horrible; gruesome.
a grisly murder.
-
formidable; grim.
a grisly countenance.
adjective
adjective
noun
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of grisly
before 1150; Middle English; Old English grislīc horrible; cognate with Old High German grīsenlīh
Explanation
Grisly means disgusting and bloody, absolutely repulsive and horrible. There’s a wonderfully creepy movie about a man who suffers a grisly death at the hands of the grizzly bears he was studying. Do you like grisly horror movies? You might think that the reason the word grisly is so creepy, gruesome, and terrifying is somehow related to gristle, those really nasty tough parts you find in meat. But no, this is not the case. Old English grislic, the root of the word, means "horrible, dreadful." If something is gory and gross, it’s grisly.
Vocabulary lists containing grisly
The Vocabulary.com Top 1000
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"The Most Dangerous Game" by Richard Connell
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Ender's Game
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Grisly content also can fit with the type of narrow but deep engagement Netflix seeks; the service’s model is based more on small pockets of high interest than the broad-viewership ambitions of many competitors.
From Seattle Times • Mar. 21, 2019
For your undead friends, you could serve the zombie-themed Grisly Swill or Rot-berry.
From Washington Times • Apr. 30, 2016
For a selection of frightful summer reads, visit Grisly Meter Strut along to the Summer Strut 2012 playlist on Spotify and Grooveshark!
From Slate • Jul. 11, 2012
Grisly purples and greens abound in his later work.
From The Guardian • Apr. 1, 2011
Grisly as it was, the experiment nonetheless announced that Darwin and Lamarck could not be right.
From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
