Adjective

(en-adj)

repellently frightful and shocking; horrific or ghastly

* 1912 : (Edgar Rice Burroughs), (Tarzan of the Apes), Chapter 6

In the middle of the floor lay a skeleton, every vestige of flesh gone from the bones to which still clung the mildewed and moldered remnants of what had once been clothing. Upon the bed lay a similar gruesome thing, but smaller, while in a tiny cradle near-by was a third, a wee mite of a skeleton.

* {{quote-news

, year=2011 , date=May 04 , title=Bin Laden was unarmed when shot dead citation , passage=Jay Carney said that the US was considering whether to release photos of bin Laden after he was killed on Sunday but that the photos were gruesome and could be inflammatory.}}

Adjective

(en adjective)

Representing or personifying death.

* 1941 , George C. Booth, Mexico's School-made Society , page 106

There are four fundamental figures. One is a man measuring and comparing his world In front of him is a macabre figure, a cadaver ready to be dissected. This symbolizes man serving mankind. The third figure is the scientist, the man who makes use of the information gathered in the first two fields of mensurable science.

Obsessed with death or the gruesome.

* 1993 , Theodore Ziolkowski, "Wagner's Parsifal'' between Mystery and Mummery", ''in'' Werner Sollors (ed.), ''The Return of Thematic Criticism , pages 274-275

Indeed, in the 1854 draft of Tristan he planned to have Parzival visit the dying knight, and both operas display the same macabre obsession with bloody gore and festering wounds.

Ghastly, shocking, terrifying.

* 1927 [1938], , Introduction

The appeal of the spectrally macabre is generally narrow because it demands from the reader a certain degree of imagination and a capacity for detachment from every-day life.