Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use gruesome in a sentence

29 example sentences · adjective

Gruesome means repellently frightful and shocking; ghastly, horrific. Example: “The team was so unprepared that the way it played was just gruesome.”

Examples of gruesome by meaning

adjectiveRepellently frightful and shocking; ghastly, horrific.

  • Upon the bed lay a similar grewsome thing, but smaller, while in a tiny cradle nearby was a third, a wee mite of a skeleton.1912 October, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “Tarzan of the Apes”, in The All-Story, New York, N.Y.: Frank A. Munsey Co., →OCLC; republished as...

adjectiveAwful, terrible.

  • The team was so unprepared that the way it played was just gruesome.

More sentences with gruesome

  • It is a less physical kind of torture, but no less gruesome.From the entry no
  • He pulled a gruesome prank on his sister.From the entry prank
  • He told me about some “fatalities”—gruesome, witty ways of killing your opponent.2023 November 13, James Somers, “A Coder Considers the Waning Days of the Craft”, in The New Yorker, →ISSN. From the entry fatality
  • Mbappé and Neymar were a gruesome twosome for any defence to come up against.2023, Lars Sivertsen, Haaland. From the entry gruesome twosome
  • At that moment there was a gurgling sound and the gruesome twosome passed through the machine.2012, David Walliams [pseudonym; David Edward Williams], “Pink Furry Slippers”, in Ratburger, London: HarperCollins Children’s Books…. From the entry gruesome twosome
  • The sight of deep-pitted orbs and gumless mouths with protruding crooked teeth was macabre and gruesome.2011, Martina Nicolls, The Sudan Curse, page 15. From the entry gumless
  • Quite apart from the gruesome road hazards, snow is awful even when you don't have to travel.2009 December 27, Barbara Ellen, The Guardian. From the entry hazard
  • We watched them load the gruesome body bag into the meatwagon.2000, Jean D. Erhardt, She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not, →ISBN, page 240. From the entry meatwagon
  • It’s genuine human skin.’ It sounded more gruesome spoken in his diphthongal southern manner—skee-ern.1980, Anthony Burgess, chapter 56, in Earthly Powers, Penguin, published 1981, page 456. From the entry diphthongal
  • Do you think they should show those terribly “gruey” (gruesome and gory) pictures in driver-education classes?1966 February 24, Helen Bottel, “‘Going Steady’ Is Out, ‘Going Around’ Is In”, Helen Help Us!, in Suffolk News-Herald, volume 44, number 47. From the entry gruey
  • Many of the hattier hats, believe me, were downright gruesome.2021, Nadine Stewart, American Milliners and their World, page 166. From the entry hatty
  • The Republican convention was a gruesome and tawdry spectacle.2017, Michael Bierut, “I’m with Her”, in Now You See It and Other Essays on Design, Hudson, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, →ISBN…. From the entry caps-locked
  • Ejecting and replacing the magazine from her chu–ko–nu, she grimly fastened the ribbon holding the gruesome trophy to her belt.2016, Felix Long, To Conquer Heaven, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 364. From the entry chu-ko-nu
  • Slunk skins were tanned from unborn calfskins which, gruesome as it sounds, were often by products of the cow slaughtering process.2001, ed. Rob Cook, The Making of a Drum Company, Hal Leonard, published 2001, page 53. From the entry slunk
  • And the prompter our payments the more pell-mell the news came in and the more obligingly gruesome its detail.1996, Rodney Hall, The Island in the Mind, page 400. From the entry pell-mell
  • Just as amazing, gruesome morgue photos of some of the madman's street-walker victims also resurfaced after being missing for decades.1992 October 27, “Weekly World News”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name), page 37. From the entry resurface
  • Yet even though unvexed by this gruesome knowledge, after two or three days I noticed that Cookie was ill at ease.1919, Camilla Kenyon, Spanish Doubloons. From the entry unvexed
  • Despite the gruesome way it looks, cottontail rabbit papillomavirus is often benign, and many rabbits end up fighting it off on their own.2025 August 14, Angela Haupt, “What to Know About the Horned ‘Zombie’ Rabbits Hopping Around Colorado”, in TIME, archived from the…. From the entry benign
  • In that film, I often hid my head in my hands, unable to watch scenes about dead babies and diving into gruesome lavatories.2017 January 19, Peter Bradshaw, “T2 Trainspotting review – choose a sequel that doesn't disappoint”, in The Guardian. From the entry baby
  • But this time Mr Butt turned his gruesome, bared back-butt to me and let fly with a hideous windripper that must have broken records.2016, Steve Cole, Invisible Inc., →ISBN. From the entry back-butt
  • For instance, in the film Dances with Wolves, a pan of an uninhabited landscape contrasts the gruesome beginning footage that depicts the carnage of war.2013, Monle Lee, Carla Johnson, Principles of Advertising: A Global Perspective, page 197. From the entry pan
  • Most had refused to believe the gruesome news brought to the stockade walls by the moccasin telegraph of the Crow, Sioux and Cheyenne.2013, Terry C. Johnston, Red Cloud's Revenge. From the entry moccasin telegraph
  • According to Richard Littlejohn, 'Matt Lucas and David Walliams' Burberried chavs captured perfectly the gruesome reality of so much of our modern landscape.'2012, Owen Jones, Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class, page 128. From the entry Burberried
  • Once a way of greasing the wheels of a gruesome bureaucracy, bribery has now become part of the cost of doing business.1992 March 14, Celestine Bohlen, “Corruption Grows Greedy in Russia”, in New York Times, retrieved 18 May 2014. From the entry grease the wheels
  • Yet the reality in Japan was far more gruesome than the artful depiction in the film, which skirts around the human suffering caused by the bomb.2023 July 21, Rachel Hall, “Anti-nuclear groups welcome Oppenheimer film but say it fails to depict true horror”, in The Guardian, →ISSN. From the entry skirt around
  • Reminded of the Alban king’s descent from Silvius, the son of Aeneas, Vergil’s reader must judge the crime of Mettus and his gruesome punishment with greater horror and revulsion.1998, Robert Alan Gurval, Actium and Augustus: The Politics and Emotions of Civil War, University of Michigan Press, page 223. From the entry alban
  • The piece of meat was served to him by the chef in the previous area of gruesome activity which was the slaughterhouse..kappas grew confident as the prize's value was raised.2003 April 1, Deadspeak2, “Ends up as a Question of Jars”, in alt.fiction.interactive (Usenet), retrieved 19 Apr 2022. From the entry cowmeat

Meaning of gruesome

  1. adjective Repellently frightful and shocking; ghastly, horrific.
  2. adjective Awful, terrible.
  3. adjective Of a person: filled with fear; afraid, fearful.

Full definition of gruesome

Questions about gruesome in a sentence

How do you use gruesome in a sentence?
Gruesome is used as an adjective. For example: “The team was so unprepared that the way it played was just gruesome.”
What is a short sentence with gruesome?
“He pulled a gruesome prank on his sister.”
What does gruesome mean?
Gruesome means repellently frightful and shocking; ghastly, horrific.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gruesome (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use gruesome in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/gruesome. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.