gruesome

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):^[1] see, for example, the 1816 quotation.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈɡɹuːsəm/, /ˈɡɹuːsm̩/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈɡɹusəm/
• Rhymes: -uːsəm
• Hyphenation: grue‧some

gruesome (comparative gruesomer or more gruesome, superlative gruesomest or most gruesome)

1. Repellently frightful and shocking; ghastly, horrific.

   Synonyms: grisly, horrible; see also Thesaurus:frightening

   Antonym: ungruesome

   • 1785 (date written), Robert Burns, “Halloween”, in Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect. […], 2nd edition, volume I, Edinburgh: […] T[homas] Cadell, […], and William Creech, […], published 1793, →OCLC, stanza XXIII, page 189:

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

   • 1816, Jedadiah Cleishbotham [pseudonym; Walter Scott], chapter XII, in Tales of My Landlord, […], volume I (The Black Dwarf), Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne and Co.] for William Blackwood, […]; London: John Murray, […], →OCLC, page 259:

     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.

   • 1848, [Edward Bulwer-Lytton], “Book V”, in King Arthur. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, stanza XLIX, page 219:

     With many a grausome shape unutterable, / Limn'd were the cavernous sepulchral walls; […]

     According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the spelling of the word is modelled after German grausam.

   • 1855, Robert Browning, “A Lovers’ Quarrel”, in Men and Women […], volume I, London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC, stanza 5, page 9:

     He has taken a bride / To his gruesome side, / That's as fair as himself is bold: […]

   • 1857, [Thomas Hughes], “The Bird-Fanciers”, in Tom Brown’s School Days. […], Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Macmillan & Co., →OCLC, part II, page 303:

     [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.

   • 1874 September, Bret Harte, “Wan Lee, the Pagan”, in Tales of the Argonauts, and Other Sketches, Boston, Mass.: James R[ipley] Osgood and Company (late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co.), published 1876, →OCLC, page 85:

     [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, […]

   • 1878, Walter Besant, James Rice, “A Friendly Chat”, in By Celia’s Arbour. A Tale of Portsmouth Town. […], volume II, London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, […], →OCLC, page 218:

     "Fallen in love! Who is there to fall in love with a man like me? Look at my shadow, Leonard." It was a gruesome-looking shadow, with high back, and head thrust forward.

   • 1889, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], “The Battle of the Sand-belt”, in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, New York, N.Y.: Charles L. Webster & Company, →OCLC, page 560:

     True, there were the usual night-sounds of the country—the whir of night-birds, the buzzing of insects, the barking of distant dogs, the mellow lowing of far-off kine—but these didn't seem to break the stillness, they only intensified it, and added a grewsome melancholy to it into the bargain.

   • 1892, Henrik Ibsen, translated by William Archer and Charles Archer, edited by William Archer, Peer Gynt: A Dramatic Poem […] (Ibsen’s Famous Prose Dramas; 6), London: Walter Scott, […]; New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, […], →OCLC, Act V, scene x, page 268:

     There are people that ship off far gruesomer figures / in sermons, in art, and in literature— […]

   • 1897 October, Dallas Lore Sharp, “A Buzzards’ Banquet”, in Lippincott’s Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, volume LX, Philadelphia, Pa.; London: J[oshua] B[allinger] Lippincott Co., →OCLC, pages 565–566:

     If ugliness be an attribute of nature, then the buzzard is its expression incarnate. […] Creeping up a little distance from the scene, I quietly hid in a great drift of leaves and corn-blades that the winds had piled in the corner of the old worm fence, and became an interested spectator at the strangest, gruesomest assemblage ever seen,—a buzzards' banquet.

   • 1912 October, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “Tarzan of the Apes”, in The All-Story, New York, N.Y.: Frank A. Munsey Co., →OCLC; republished as “Jungle Battles”, in Tarzan of the Apes, New York, N.Y.: A[lbert] L[evi] Burt Company, June 1914, →OCLC, page 69:

     In the middle of the floor lay a skeleton, every vestige of flesh gone from the bones to which still clung the mildewed and mouldered remnants of what had once been clothing. Upon the bed lay a similar grewsome thing, but smaller, while in a tiny cradle nearby was a third, a wee mite of a skeleton.

   • 2011 May 4, “Bin Laden ‘was Unarmed’ when Shot Dead”, in Al Jazeera‎^[1], archived from the original on 26 January 2025:

     [White House press secretary] Jay Carney said that the US was considering whether to release photos of [Osama] bin Laden after he was killed on Sunday but that the photos were "gruesome" and could be inflammatory.

2. (informal, loosely) Awful, terrible.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:bad

   Antonyms: see Thesaurus:good

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

3. (archaic, rare) Of a person: filled with fear; afraid, fearful.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:afraid

   Antonyms: see Thesaurus:unafraid

   • 1869, R[ichard] D[oddridge] Blackmore, chapter VII, in Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor. […], volume I, London: Sampson Low, Son, & Marston, […], →OCLC, page 82:

     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?"

   • 1879, Henry James, Junr., “Brook Farm and Concord”, in John Morley, editor, Hawthorne (English Men of Letters; 13), London: Macmillan and Co., →OCLC, page 87:

     Some of his [Nathaniel Hawthorne's] companions, either then or afterwards, took, I believe, rather a gruesome view of his want of articulate enthusiasm, and accused him of coming to the place as a sort of intellectual vampire, for purely psychological purposes.

• grewsome (obsolete, 19th c.)

• gruesomely
• gruesomeness
• gruesome twosome
• ungruesome