grim
Americanadjective
-
stern and admitting of no appeasement or compromise.
grim determination; grim necessity.
- Synonyms:
- unyielding, harsh
- Antonyms:
- lenient
-
of a sinister or ghastly character.
a grim joke.
- Antonyms:
- attractive
-
having a harsh, surly, forbidding, or morbid air.
a grim man but a just one; a grim countenance.
- Antonyms:
- gentle
-
fierce, savage, or cruel.
War is a grim business.
-
unpleasant or repellant.
Scrubbing toilets is a grim task that no one likes doing.
adjective
-
stern; resolute
grim determination
-
harsh or formidable in manner or appearance
-
harshly ironic or sinister
grim laughter
-
cruel, severe, or ghastly
a grim accident
-
archaic fierce
a grim warrior
-
informal unpleasant; disagreeable
-
to hold very firmly or resolutely
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of grim
First recorded before 900; Middle English, Old English; cognate with Old Saxon, Old High German grimm, Old Norse grimmr
Explanation
Things that are gloomy, stark, ghastly, and somber are grim. Sunshine, puppies, and rainbows are not grim; zombies, reapers, and mummies are grim. Less scary things like drizzly, foggy days can also be called grim. Two famous uses of the adjective grim are the Grim Reaper and Grimm's Fairy Tales. Mr. Reaper shows up in movies and books wearing a long, hooded black cape and carrying a scythe, or long-handled blade used, in less grim circumstances, for mowing grass and reaping grain: he represents death. The real-life German brothers wrote some bone-chilling tales under their own name, Grimm, meaning "cruel, fierce," which is related to the English word grim. Modern grim things include crime-drama images of dead bodies and characters in horror movies.
Vocabulary lists containing grim
The SAT: Multiple-Meaning Words, List 4
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The New SAT: Multiple-Meaning Words
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More Negative Words to Describe a Person
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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.
See Examples For:
“It’s grim and it’s hard. There are jobs, but we have a large amount of extremely qualified people competing for every level of job,” Urquhart said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 19, 2026
Economic forecasts for the coming months continue to be grim as fighting in the Middle East intensifies.
From Salon ● Sep. 19, 2026
He wasn’t even a major player in the tightknit community of AI safety advocates who discuss grim scenarios at happy hours across San Francisco.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 17, 2026
One of the senior doctors who tried to raise concerns about Lucy Letby with hospital managers has told the BBC the final inquiry report makes for "grim reading".
From BBC ● Sep. 15, 2026
I glanced over at Regan out of the corner of my eye and saw her grim expression as her mother looked from her to me and back again.
From "Glitch" by Laura Martin
Reports David has heard from clients in Cameroon are even grimmer: the IOM has refused to facilitate medical care for some detainees, the lawyer said.
From Barron's ● Jul. 7, 2026
In earlier decades, a grimmer economic mood usually meant lower inflation-adjusted spending, while shopping picked up when consumers reported more optimism.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 22, 2026
She’s hardly in a position to do much more than accept what’s going on as a grimmer version of her own dead-end predicament.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 6, 2026
Other, grimmer recent headlines help to explain why.
From Slate ● Jun. 17, 2024
By twilight the place seemed even grimmer than it had that morning.
From "Across Five Aprils" by Irene Hunt
He volunteered at the very start and has survived some of the grimmest battles.
From BBC ● Jul. 20, 2026
When asked about the economy in surveys, people are reporting one of the grimmest economic moods on record.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 14, 2026
Most of this year’s documentary nominees deal with the grimmest of tragedies, as in “All the Empty Rooms” and “Children No More: Were and Are Gone,” which address the remembrance of children brutally killed.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 20, 2026
Behind the scenes, his producers eagerly exploited the grimmest episodes of vulnerable people’s lives, never disabusing them of the false assumption that appearing on “Springer” would somehow help them.
From Salon ● Jan. 7, 2025
The grimmest examples of germs’ role in history come from the European conquest of the Americas that began with Columbus’s voyage of 1492.
From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond
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.
