grotesque
pronunciation
How to pronounce grotesque in British English:
UK [grəʊˈtesk]
How to pronounce grotesque in American English:
US [groʊˈtesk]
-
- Noun:
- art characterized by an incongruous mixture of parts of humans and animals interwoven with plants
-
- Adjective:
- distorted and unnatural in shape or size; abnormal and hideous
- ludicrously odd
Word Origin
- grotesque
- grotesque: [16] Etymologically, grotesque means ‘grotto-like’. Its Italian source, grottesco, was used in the phrase pittura grottesca, literally ‘grotto-like pictures’, denoting wall paintings of the sort discovered in the excavated basements of old buildings. Many of them were evidently bizarre or highly imaginative, and so grottesca came to mean ‘fanciful, fantastic’.English acquired the word via Old French crotesque (crotescque was the earliest English spelling, later re-formed as grotesque on the basis of French grotesque and Italian grottesca), and in general use from the mid-18th century onward it slid towards the pejorativeness of ‘ludicrous, absurd’. The colloquial abbreviation grotty is first recorded in print in 1964.=> grotto
- grotesque (adj.)
- "wildly formed, of irregular proportions, boldly odd," c. 1600s, originally a noun (1560s), from Middle French crotesque (16c., Modern French grotesque), from Italian grottesco, literally "of a cave," from grotta (see grotto). The explanation that the word first was used of paintings found on the walls of Roman ruins revealed by excavation (Italian pittura grottesca) is "intrinsically plausible," according to OED. Originally merely fanciful and fantastic, the sense became pejorative, "clownishly absurd, uncouth," after mid-18c. As the British name for a style of square-cut, sans-serif letter, from 1875. Related: Grotesquely; grotesqueness.
Synonym
Example
- 1. But for every bikini , for every batted eyelash , gaga introduces intimations of the grotesque , the repulsive .
- 2. Bythe borna virus is at once obscure and grotesque .
- 3. As in china , capitalism is letting in the outside world-a vital change for a people fed only grotesque lies .
- 4. And looming above it all the grotesque shard , our capital 's latest and most disgusting lump of privatised skyline .
- 5. Exquisite bodies or the curious and grotesque story of the anatomical model , an exhibition at the wellcome collection .