Adjacent Words

macabre definitions

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WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

adj
1: shockingly repellent; inspiring horror; "ghastly wounds"; "the grim aftermath of the bombing"; "the grim task of burying the victims"; "a grisly murder"; "gruesome evidence of human sacrifice"; "macabre tales of war and plague in the Middle ages"; "macabre tortures conceived by madmen" [syn: ghastly, grim, grisly, gruesome, macabre, sick]

Merriam Webster's

adjective Etymology: French, from (danse) macabre dance of death, from Middle French (danse de) Macabré Date: 1889 1. having death as a subject ; comprising or including a personalized representation of death 2. dwelling on the gruesome 3. tending to produce horror in a beholder Synonyms: see ghastly

Oxford Reference Dictionary

adj. grim, gruesome. Etymology: ME f. OF macabré perh. f. Macabé a Maccabee, with ref. to a miracle play showing the slaughter of the Maccabees

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

You describe something such as an event or story as macabre when it is strange and horrible or upsetting, usually because it involves death or injury. Police have made a macabre discovery... = chilling ADJ: usu ADJ n

Moby Thesaurus

appalling, astounding, awe-inspiring, awesome, awful, blue, cadaverous, corpselike, deadly, deathlike, deathly, deathly pale, dire, direful, dread, dreaded, dreadful, eerie, eldritch, fearsome, fell, fiendish, formidable, frightening, frightful, ghastly, ghostlike, ghostly, ghoulish, gory, grim, grisly, grotesque, gruesome, haggard, hideous, horrendous, horrible, horrid, horrific, horrifying, livid, lurid, morbid, mortuary, pale, redoubtable, schrecklich, shocking, spookish, spooky, terrible, terrific, terrifying, tremendous, uncanny, unearthly, wan, weird