Word.ws English Dictionary

grimness

grimness noun: the characteristic or quality of being grim.

Noun

grimness (usually uncountable, plural grimnesses)

  1. (usually) The characteristic or quality of being grim.
    • This one was almost featureless, as if still in the making, with an aspect of monotonous grimness.1899 February, Joseph Conrad, “The Heart of Darkness”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXV, number M, New York, N.Y.: The Leonard Scott Publishing Company, […], →OCLC, part I, page 202
    • This is a good example of Huxley's method of setting off against each other the frivolities of the artificial world and the grimnesses of the real one […]2007, George Woodcock, Dawn and the Darkest Hour: A Study of Aldous Huxley, page 79

Forms of grimness

pluralgrimnesses

Origin of grimness

From Middle English grimnesse, from Old English grimnes (“severity, fierceness, cruelty”), equivalent to grim + -ness.

Questions about grimness

What does grimness mean?
Grimness means the characteristic or quality of being grim.
What part of speech is grimness?
Grimness is a noun.
What is the plural of grimness?
The plural of grimness is grimnesses.

Words near grimness in the dictionary

  1. Grimmie
  2. grimming
  3. grimmish
  4. Grimmond
  5. Grimmy
  6. grimness
  7. grimnesses
  8. Grimnir
  9. grimoire
  10. grimoires
  11. Grimoldby

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: grimness (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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