grotesqueries

Noun

grotesquerie (countable and uncountable, plural grotesqueries)

1. An instance of grotesqueness, a grotesque thing.
2. Grotesque things collectively.
3. Grotesqueness, the quality of being grotesque or macabre.
   • She wakened in sharp panic, bewildered by the grotesquerie of some half-remembered dream in contrast with the harshness of inclement fact, drowsily realizing that since she had fallen asleep it had come on to rain smartly out of a shrouded sky.1914 November, Louis Joseph Vance, “An Outsider […]”, in Munsey’s Magazine, volume LIII, number II, New York, N.Y.: The Frank A[ndrew] Munsey Company, […], published 1915, →OCLC, chapter II...
4. A genre of horror literature that was popular in the early 20th century, and practiced by writers such as Ambrose Bierce and Fritz Leiber.