Word.ws English Dictionary

macabrest

macabrest is the superlative form of macabre.

Meaning of macabre

Adjective

macabre (comparative more macabre, superlative most macabre)

  1. Representing or personifying death.
    • There are four fundamental figures. One is a man measuring and comparing his world[…] In front of him is a macabre figure, a cadaver ready to be dissected. This symbolizes man serving mankind. The third figure is the scientist, the man who makes use of the information gathered in the first two...1941, George C. Booth, Mexico's School-made Society, page 106
  2. Obsessed with death or the gruesome.
    • Indeed, in the 1854 draft of Tristan he planned to have Parzival visit the dying knight, and both operas display the same macabre obsession with bloody gore and festering wounds.1993, Theodore Ziolkowski, “Wagner's Parsifal between Mystery and Mummery”, in Werner Sollors, editor, The Return of Thematic Criticism, pages 274–275
  3. Ghastly, shocking, terrifying.
    • The appeal of the spectrally macabre is generally narrow because it demands from the reader a certain degree of imagination and a capacity for detachment from every-day life.1927, H. P. Lovecraft, “Introduction”, in Supernatural Horror in Literature, published 1938

Questions about macabrest

What is macabrest the superlative form of?
Macabrest is the superlative form of macabre.

Words near macabrest in the dictionary

  1. macabo
  2. macabre
  3. macabrely
  4. macabreness
  5. macabresque
  6. macabrest
  7. Macabug
  8. Macabugos
  9. macaca
  10. macaca moment
  11. macaca moments

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: macabrest (page history and authors); macabre (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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Cite this entry: “macabrest.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/macabrest. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.