Adjective

(en adjective)

Inauspicious]], ominous, unlucky, illegitimate (as in [[w:bar sinister, bar sinister ).

* Ben Jonson

All the several ills that visit earth, / Brought forth by night, with a sinister birth.

*'>citation

Evil or seemingly evil; indicating lurking danger or harm.

sinister influences

the sinister atmosphere of the crypt

Of the left side.

* Shakespeare

Here on his sinister cheek.

* Shakespeare

My mother's blood / Runs on the dexter cheek, and this sinister / Bounds in my father's.

* 1911 , (Saki), ‘The Unrest-Cure’, The Chronicles of Clovis :

Before the train had stopped he had decorated his sinister shirt-cuff with the inscription, ‘J. P. Huddle, The Warren, Tilfield, near Slowborough.’

(heraldry) On the left side of a shield from the wearer's standpoint, and the right side to the viewer.

(obsolete) Wrong, as springing from indirection or obliquity; perverse; dishonest.

* Francis Bacon

Nimble and sinister tricks and shifts.

* South

He scorns to undermine another's interest by any sinister or inferior arts.

* Sir Walter Scott

He read in their looks sinister intentions directed particularly toward himself.

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.}}