Wiktionary

grotesque

English

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WOTD – 15 July 2008
 
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Etymology

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From Middle French grotesque (French grotesque), from Italian grottesco (“of a cave”), from grotta. Compare English grotto.

Pronunciation

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Adjective

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grotesque (comparative grotesquer, superlative grotesquest)

  1. Distorted and unnatural in shape or size; abnormal, especially in a hideous way.
    Coordinate term: baroque
    • 1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XV, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume III, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 114:
      The chimney-piece was of party-coloured marble, covered with figures, some of whose faces were beautiful, but generally running off into those grotesque combinations which characterised the peculiar taste of their time.
    • 1912, The World's Wit and Humor, page 176:
      A Libyan longing took us, and we would have chosen, if we could, to bear a strand of grotesque beads, or a handful of brazen gauds, and traffic them for some sable maid with crisp locks, whom, uncoffling from the captive train beside the desert, we should make to do our general housework forever, through the right of lawful purchase.
    • 2019 April 10, qntm, “CASE HATE RED”, in SCP Foundation‎[1], archived from the original on 29 May 2024:
      Some of the vehicles are, indeed, taxis, but all of them are unoccupied, and most have their doors left open. There are colossally tall darkened figures stalking down the streets, so dark and slender that Wheeler actually fails to notice them. There is screaming, a grotesque, awful screaming coming from many human mouths, coming from somewhere down the main road. But that's the only way he can go.
  2. Disgusting or otherwise viscerally revolting.
    Synonym: gross
  3. (typography) Sans serif.

Derived terms

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Translations

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Noun

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grotesque (countable and uncountable, plural grotesques)

  2. A style of ornamentation characterized by fanciful combinations of intertwined forms.
  3. Anything grotesque.
    • 2009, Emily Chivers Yochim, Skate Life, page 128:
      Obese and largely unintelligible, Don Vito represents a working-class white male grotesque, the picture of excess.
    • 2016 February 23, Robbie Collin, “Grimsby review: ' Sacha Baron Cohen's vital, venomous action movie'”, in The Daily Telegraph (London):
      He’s also the new character from Sacha Baron Cohen, the man behind Ali G, Borat and Brüno: that unholy trinity of comic grotesques that told us a lot more about ourselves than we’d like to admit.
  4. (typography) A sans serif typeface.
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Further reading

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French

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Etymology

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From Middle French grotesque, from Italian grottesco (“of a cave”), from grotta.

Pronunciation

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Adjective

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grotesque (plural grotesques)

  1. farcical (ridiculous)
  2. grotesque

Noun

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grotesque m (plural grotesques)

  1. grotesqueness

Descendants

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  • → Romanian: grotesc

Further reading

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Middle French

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Alternative forms

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Etymology

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From Italian grottesco.

Adjective

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grotesque m or f (plural grotesques)

  1. farcical (ridiculous)

Descendants

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Noun

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grotesque f (plural grotesques)

  1. small cave
  2. ornament

References

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  • Godefroy, Frédéric, Dictionnaire de l’ancienne langue française et de tous ses dialectes du IXe au XVe siècle (1881) (grotesque, supplement)
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