grievous
pronunciation
How to pronounce grievous in British English:
UK [ˈgri:vəs]
How to pronounce grievous in American English:
US [ˈɡrivəs]
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- Adjective:
- causing fear or anxiety by threatening great harm
- causing or marked by grief or anguish
- of great gravity or crucial import; requiring serious thought
- shockingly brutal or cruel
Word Origin
- grievous (adj.)
- c. 1300, from Anglo-French grevous (Old French grevos) "heavy, large, weighty; hard, difficult, toilsome," from grief (see grief). Legal term grievous bodily harm attested from 1803.
Synonym
Antonym
Example
- 1. But those probably aren 't his most grievous problems .
- 2. The federal reserve , led by paul volcker , eventually defeated american inflation in the early 1980s , albeit at a grievous cost to employment .
- 3. Graft helps to explain grievous overspending .
- 4. The corporate impacts already look grievous .
- 5. Mr cameron may have made a grievous mistake with regard to britain 's long-term interest .