grim

comparative grimmer · superlative grimmest

1. Dismal and gloomy, cold and forbidding.

   Life was grim in many northern industrial towns.

   3 more examples

   Developments were markedly different in the Soviet zone, but ultimately ended in perhaps an even grimmer dead end: that of SED leader Walter Ulbricht’s thoroughly Stalinized German Democratic Republic (GDR).

   2017 May 28, Loren Balhorn, “The Lost History of Antifa”, in Jacobin Magazine

   Cristiana Paşca Palmer, the executive secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, said the destruction of the world’s biggest rainforest was a grim reminder that a fresh approach needed to stabilise the climate and prevent ecosystems from declining to a point of no return, with dire consequences for humanity.

   2019 August 30, Jonathan Watts, “Amazon fires show world heading for point of no return, says UN”, in Katharine Viner, editor, The Guardian, London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 02 Dec 2019

   It's been a grim start to the year.

   2022 January 12, Nigel Harris, “Comment: Unhappy start to 2022”, in RAIL, number 948, page 3

   Synonyms: bleak, harsh, cheerless, comfortless, bleak, dark, morose, depressing

2. Rigid and unrelenting.

   His grim determination enabled him to win.

   Synonyms: overwhelming, unbending, adamantine, concrete, firm, granitic, hard, inflexible

3. Ghastly or sinister.

   A grim castle overshadowed the village.

   2 more examples

   There was, I thought, a trace of very profound and very genuine irony in the timbre—not the flashy, meaninglessly jaunty pseudo-irony of the callow "sophisticate," which Derby had habitually affected, but something grim, basic, pervasive and potentially evil.

   1933 August (date written), H[oward] P[hillips] Lovecraft, “The Thing on the Doorstep”, in Farnsworth Wright, editor, Weird Tales: A Magazine of the Bizarre and Unusual, volume 29, number 1, Indianapolis, Ind.: Popular Fiction Pub. Co., published January 1937, →OCLC, section 4, page 62

   In movie terms, it suggests Paul Verhoeven in Robocop/Starship Troopers mode, an R-rated bloodbath where the grim spectacle of children murdering each other on television is bread-and-circuses for the age of reality TV, enforced by a totalitarian regime to keep the masses at bay.

   2012 March 22, Scott Tobias, “The Hunger Games”, in The A.V. Club, archived from the original on 23 Mar 2012

   Synonyms: forboding, malevolent, abandoned, arrant, bad, bad apple, bad seed, baleful

4. Disgusting; gross.

   – Wanna see the dead rat I found in my fridge? – Mate, that is grim!

   1 more example

   Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; […]

   1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter I, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 1

   Synonyms: foul, loathsome, abhorrant, abhorrent, bad, sickly, mean, infernal

5. obsoleteFierce, cruel, furious.

   Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw / Daily devours apace, and nothing said.

   1897 [1637], John Milton, edited by Homer B[axter] Sprague, Milton's Lycidas, Boston: Ginn & Company, pages 22–23, lines 128–129

   2 more examples

   The LORDE shall be grymme vpon them, and destroye all the goddes in the londe. And all the Iles of the Heithen shal worshipe him, euery man in his place.

   1535 October 14 (Gregorian calendar), Myles Coverdale, transl., Biblia: The Byble, […] (Coverdale Bible), [Cologne or Marburg]: [Eucharius Cervicornus and Johannes Soter?], →OCLC, Zachary [Zechariah] ij:[11], folio xcvij, recto

   The first people we saw were two grim and stout Salvages upon Cape Charles, with long poles like Javelings, headed with bone, they boldly demanded what we were, and what we would[…]

   1907 [1624], John Smith, chapter 5, in The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles, volume 1, New York: Macmillan Company

   Synonyms: ferocious, raging, savage, violent, agitated, angry, annoyed, apoplectic

present singular third person grims · participle present grimming · participle past grimmed · past grimmed

1. raretransitiveTo make grim; to give a stern or forbidding aspect to.

plural grims

1. Multicultural London Englishdatedslangprobably a fashionable word around 2006A promiscuous woman.

   You got a new girl and she looks choong (Choong) But you didn't know your girl was a grim […] Your girl she's a grim, I wouldn't have no grim as my ting

   2006 July 1, “Grim” (track 8), in Wiley (lyrics), Eskiboy: Da 2nd Phaze

   Synonyms: NB: All terms are usually pejorative unless stated otherwise., 304, alley cat, alleycat, amorette, amoret, amorosa, article

plural grims

1. countableobsoleteuncountableAnger, wrath.
2. countableobsoleteuncountableA specter, ghost, haunting spirit.

plural Grims

1. An English surname.