grim
adjectiveverbnounnouncommon in dialogue
- United States//ɡɹɪm//
Dismal and gloomy, cold and forbidding.
adjective
- 1
Dismal and gloomy, cold and forbidding.
Life was grim in many northern industrial towns.
Developments were markedly different in the Soviet zone, but ultimately ended in perhaps an even grimmer dead end: that of SED leader Walter Ulbricht’s thoroughly Stalinized German Democratic Republic (GDR).
Cristiana Paşca Palmer, the executive secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, said the destruction of the world’s biggest rainforest was a grim reminder that a fresh approach needed to stabilise the climate and prevent ecosystems from declining to a point of no return, with dire consequences for humanity.
It's been a grim start to the year.
- 2
Rigid and unrelenting.
His grim determination enabled him to win.
- 3
Ghastly or sinister.
A grim castle overshadowed the village.
There was, I thought, a trace of very profound and very genuine irony in the timbre—not the flashy, meaninglessly jaunty pseudo-irony of the callow "sophisticate," which Derby had habitually affected, but something grim, basic, pervasive and potentially evil.
In movie terms, it suggests Paul Verhoeven in Robocop/Starship Troopers mode, an R-rated bloodbath where the grim spectacle of children murdering each other on television is bread-and-circuses for the age of reality TV, enforced by a totalitarian regime to keep the masses at bay.
- 4
Disgusting; gross.
– Wanna see the dead rat I found in my fridge? – Mate, that is grim!
Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; […]
- 5
obsoleteFierce, cruel, furious.
The LORDE shall be grymme vpon them, and destroye all the goddes in the londe. And all the Iles of the Heithen shal worshipe him, euery man in his place.
The first people we saw were two grim and stout Salvages upon Cape Charles, with long poles like Javelings, headed with bone, they boldly demanded what we were, and what we would[…]
Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw / Daily devours apace, and nothing said.
Etymology
From Middle English grim, from Old English grimm, from Proto-West Germanic *grimm, from Proto-Germanic *grimmaz, from Proto-Indo-European *gʰrem- (“to resound, thunder, grumble, roar”).
verb
- 1
rareTo make grim; to give a stern or forbidding aspect to.
noun
- 1
datedA promiscuous woman.
You got a new girl and she looks choong (Choong) But you didn't know your girl was a grim […] Your girl she's a grim, I wouldn't have no grim as my ting
noun
- 1
obsoleteAnger, wrath.
- 2
obsoleteA specter, ghost, haunting spirit.
Etymology
From Middle English grim, grym, greme, from Old English *grimu, *grimmu, grima, from Proto-Germanic *grimmį̄ (“anger, wrath”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʰrem- (“to resound, thunder, grumble, roar”). Cognate with Middle Dutch grimme, Middle High German grimme f (“anger”), modern German Grimm m.
Forms
- plural
- grims
- comparative
- grimmer
- superlative
- grimmest
- past tense
- grimmed
- past participle
- grimmed
- present participle
- grimming
- third person singular
- grims