Grim Meaning
/ɡɹɪm/Definition, CEFR level B2, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
Listen pronunciation
Definition
adjDismal and gloomy, cold and forbidding.
adjRigid and unrelenting.
Sentence Examples
From the doctor's grim expression, it was clear he had somber news for the patient.
Marcia looked grim when I told her the story.
CEFR Practice Quiz
After hearing the bad news, his face turned ____ and he did not smile.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The doctor's face had a ____ expression as he delivered the news about the patient's very serious condition.
Word Origin & History
From Middle English grim, from Old English grimm, from Proto-West Germanic *grimm, from Proto-Germanic *grimmaz, from Proto-Indo-European *gʰrem- (“to resound, thunder, grumble, roar”).
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"Developments were markedly different in the Soviet zone, but ultimately ended in perhaps an even grimmer dead end: that of SED leader Walter Ulbricht’s thoroughly Stalinized German Democratic Republic (GDR)."
— 2017 May 26, Loren Balhorn, “The Lost History of Antifa”, in Jacobin Magazine:
"Cristiana Paşca Palmer, the executive secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, said the destruction of the world’s biggest rainforest was a grim reminder that a fresh approach needed to stabilise the climate and prevent ecosystems from declining to a point of no return, with dire consequences for humanity."
— 2019 August 30, Jonathan Watts, “Amazon fires show world heading for point of no return, says UN”, in Katharine Viner, editor, The Guardian, London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 02 Dec 2019:
"It's been a grim start to the year."
— 2022 January 12, Nigel Harris, “Comment: Unhappy start to 2022”, in RAIL, number 948, page 3:
"There was, I thought, a trace of very profound and very genuine irony in the timbre—not the flashy, meaninglessly jaunty pseudo-irony of the callow "sophisticate," which Derby had habitually affected, but something grim, basic, pervasive and potentially evil."
— 1933 August (date written), H[oward] P[hillips] Lovecraft, “The Thing on the Doorstep”, in Farnsworth Wright, editor, Weird Tales: A Magazine of the Bizarre and Unusual, volume 29, number 1, Indianapolis, Ind.: Popular Fiction Pub. Co., published January 1937, →OCLC, section 4, page 62:
"In movie terms, it suggests Paul Verhoeven in Robocop/Starship Troopers mode, an R-rated bloodbath where the grim spectacle of children murdering each other on television is bread-and-circuses for the age of reality TV, enforced by a totalitarian regime to keep the masses at bay."
— 2012 March 22, Scott Tobias, “The Hunger Games”, in The A.V. Club:
Explore More B2 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
After hearing the bad news, his face turned ____ and he did not smile.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The doctor's face had a ____ expression as he delivered the news about the patient's very serious condition.