grewsome

Adjective

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

1. Repellently frightful and shocking; ghastly, horrific.
   • He taks a ſvvirlie, auld moſs-oak, / For ſome black, grouſome Carlin; […]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...

   Synonyms:

   grisly, horrible, affreux, alarming, spine-tingling, appalling, awful, eldritch, buggish, butt-clenching

   Antonyms:

   ungruesome

2. (broadly, informal) Awful, terrible.
   • The team was so unprepared that the way it played was just gruesome.

   Synonyms:

   abysmal, atrocious, awful, bad, chronic, coarse, corny, crap, crapalicious, crappy

   Antonyms:

   acceptable, agreeable, all right, amazing, as fine as Dick's hatband, awesome, beatific, bene, blissful, bodacious

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

   Synonyms:

   afeared, afraid, alarmed, anxious, apprehensive, chicken, concerned, creeped out, fearful, frightened

   Antonyms:

   unafraid, unruffled, unterrified