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vocabulary
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grotesque
in a sentence

show 185 more with this conextual meaning
  • The lights from the windows sent a flickering illumination that made grotesque patterns on the courtyard below,   (source)
    grotesque = distorted and unnatural in shape or size
  • Grotesque gleam of a time no history will ever fully describe!   (source)
    grotesque = distorted and unnatural in shape or size -- especially in a disturbing way
  • ...the interminable grotesques seem to form around a common centre and rush off in headlong plunges of equal distraction.   (source)
    grotesques = things that are distorted and unnatural in shape or size -- especially in a disturbing way
  • He repeated the movement—a grotesque one.   (source)
    grotesque = distorted and unnatural
  • Parts of her upper lip twisted grotesquely.†   (source)
  • Or something grotesque and alien that had somehow landed miraculously in the middle of town and needed to be snuffed out, and fast.†   (source)
  • It wasn't easy, because Hassan's upper lip was a grotesque mesh of swollen, raw tissue.†   (source)
  • Most of the stylists they interview on television are so dyed, stenciled, and surgically altered they're grotesque.†   (source)
  • Cunningham tried to join the navy, but recruiters, seeing his grotesquely scarred legs, assumed that he was too crippled to serve.†   (source)
  • Most of the huge rubber tires were punctured and grotesquely twisted on their axles.†   (source)
  • It was all that held her, pulled grotesquely taut.†   (source)
  • Truly grotesque.†   (source)
  • Its body resembled a gigantic slug, sparsely covered in hair and glistening with slime, grotesquely pulsating in and out as it breathed.†   (source)
  • The dead mammals were heaped together, a grotesque pile of decayed animal parts.†   (source)
  • Some were grotesquely fat, or weirdly over-muscled, or uncomfortably thin, and almost all of them had wrong, ugly proportions.†   (source)
  • High above them, floating along in midair, four struggling figures were being contorted into grotesque shapes.†   (source)
  • I have been attacked by crows and men with grotesque faces; I have been set on fire by the boy who almost threw me off a ledge; I have almost drowned twice—and this is what I can't cope with?†   (source)
  • Mrs. Poe purchased clothing for the orphans that was in grotesque colors, and itched.†   (source)
  • CUT TO: BLACK-AND-WHITE SHOTS from various angles of body in grotesque position.†   (source)
  • He looked grotesque, and vaguely angry.†   (source)
  • Standing here and there like frozen party guests were Medusa's garden statues— petrified children, satyrs, and centaurs-all smiling grotesquely.†   (source)
  • Demeaning posters appeared in both Polish and German, depicting us as grotesque, filthy creatures, with large, crooked noses.†   (source)
  • Of course, she'd have to duel the grotesque one.†   (source)
  • There's nothing grotesque, or mangled—or even raw-looking—about the stump.†   (source)
  • Langdon wanted to disengage, tell himself he was lost in some grotesque nightmare, soon to wake up in a world that made sense.†   (source)
  • The first boy moans grotesquely.†   (source)
  • I sprang up, grabbed it, and then, in a fumbling and perhaps grotesque offering to Phineas, I chinned myself.†   (source)
  • They're sitting in a semi-circle around a grotesque-looking figure, a scarecrowlike effigy.†   (source)
  • It stared back with eyes that swam in dark liquid, furrowed trenches of carbon-black flesh loose on its hunched frame, its mouth hinged open grotesquely so that a mass of long eel-like tongues could wriggle out.†   (source)
  • Then, as Mercy stepped forward, one shoulder dipped and jerked back grotesquely, and Kit realized that she leaned on crutches.†   (source)
  • A grotesquely ancient oak provided shelter from the biting wind.†   (source)
  • The statues are half man and half beast, grotesque, fantastic creatures with beaks and wings and tails.†   (source)
  • We have toured for five hundred years, bringing the grotesque to generation after generation.†   (source)
  • Everything looks strange and grotesque and distorted, certain streets glittering with glass from smashed windows, the smell of burning in the air.†   (source)
  • An oil lantern threw grotesque shadows onto the walls.†   (source)
  • There was a grotesque thing in the safe room.†   (source)
  • They were perhaps the final grotesque toy of the unwinding fossil fuel age, given to ten-year-olds for Christmas.†   (source)
  • It pained my insides to see, once again, the twisted, scowling white faces with open mouths jeering, clustered about my friend's head like bouquets of grotesque flowers.†   (source)
  • Before we fled Bethlehem's drear libraries I had also recently read The Pilgrim's Progress and Paradise Lost, which have weaker plot lines than Dr. Jekyll, and many other books Our Father does not know about, including the poems of Miss Emily Dickinson and Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque by Edgar Allan Poe.†   (source)
  • …nowhere, stained-glass windows a hundred meters tall set to catch the first rays of solstice sun or the moon on midwinter night, paneless windows the size of a man's fist looking out on nothing in particular, an endless array of bas-relief, grotesque sculptures in half-hidden niches, and more than a thousand gargoyles staring down from eave and parapet, transept and sepulcher, peering down through wood rafters in the great halls and positioned so as to peer in the blood-tinted windows…†   (source)
  • We pulled, each crew against the rest, hauling our grotesquely unstreamlined little boats along.†   (source)
  • They mark special occasions, write horrible poetry, sketch things that are beautiful or grotesque, or just rant.†   (source)
  • In an instant, the hissing, burning gas vapor lit the grotesque scene.†   (source)
  • Their injuries were grotesque.†   (source)
  • Because she no longer needed him, because she was now a crucial and measurable driver of world commerce, and because she had two men at the Circle to choose from—one of them a volcanic, calligraphic enigma who climbed walls to take her from behind—she could afford to be generous toward poor Mercer, his shaggy head and grotesque fatty back.†   (source)
  • The carts were piled dangerously high, and Amy topped each of them with a bunch of celery, like some grotesque centerpiece.†   (source)
  • I looked down at my feet: my legs and ankles were swelling grotesquely.†   (source)
  • It can be argued, for instance, that war is grotesque.†   (source)
  • Or to use Steiner's analogy: Try to draw up the creature from the depths of the sea, and it will disintegrate or change form grotesquely.†   (source)
  • Excess, deterioration, self-destructiveness, grotesque behavior, a physical bloating and a series of insults to the brain, self-delivered.†   (source)
  • It seemed to be spreading, humped and knobbled and grotesquely misshapen— Clary tore her eyes away as Jace stood, pulling her after him.†   (source)
  • As if somehow sharing a simple delight in the grotesqueness of that image, she smiled back, and the place noticeably brightened.†   (source)
  • The grotesque photo appeared on-screen again.†   (source)
  • Something grotesque.†   (source)
  • Having the respirator tube down her throat for 10 hours had puffed her lips badly, and her face looked grotesque.†   (source)
  • He's unable to comprehend things when they appear in the ugly, chopped-up, grotesque sentence style common to engineering and technical writing.†   (source)
  • Dominating the property was a towering mango tree; each summer it dropped its heavy fruit with loud thuds that sounded, somewhat grotesquely, like bodies being thrown off the roof.†   (source)
  • Twisted and turned, the camera perched precariously beside his ear, he felt like a circus grotesque.†   (source)
  • An empiricist of our own century, Bertrand Russell, has provided a more grotesque example.†   (source)
  • Elbows bent, hands on shoulders, she flailed her arms like a bird in an eternal, grotesquely futile effort to fly.†   (source)
  • A woman not five feet tall, with a grotesque, protruding stomach, was wheeling an old black baby carriage down the street.†   (source)
  • Never mind the grotesque scarring, in another year or so, her mouth will be pulled permanently open.†   (source)
  • She looked at the grotesque eating equipment Alexandra had put by his plate.†   (source)
  • The girl had been grotesquely tortured.†   (source)
  • This part of it would have been comical if the results were not so grotesque.†   (source)
  • Two thick gashes ran the length ofit They started near his kidneys and ended at his shoulder blades, widening to form an upsidedown V. The gashes were so grotesque I almost gasped in horror.†   (source)
  • At the rear of the grotesque procession trudged a comet's tail of inhabitants from Dras-Leona: nobles, merchants, tradesmen, several high-ranking military commanders, and a motley collection of those less fortunate, such as laborers, beggars, and common foot soldiers.†   (source)
  • His tiny feet, encased in short black boots with steel buckles, would have neatly fitted into a delicate lady's dancing slippers; when he stood up, he was no taller than a twelve-year-old child, and suddenly looked, strutting on stunted legs that seemed grotesquely inadequate to the grown-up bulk they supported, not like a well-built truck driver but like a retired jockey, overblown and muscle-bound, outside the drugstore, Perry stationed himself in the sun.†   (source)
  • "Oh, everything's fine now," she said, and made a grotesquely girlish little skip, holding heavily onto Lincoln's hand.†   (source)
  • Next to him, but just a little behind, came the Gross Exaggeration, whose grotesque features and thoroughly unpleasant manners were hideous to see, and whose rows of wicked teeth were made only to mangle the truth.†   (source)
  • He puts his finger to his lips and winks grotesquely--an exaggerated gesture that pulls the side of his mouth up toward his eye.†   (source)
  • I gaze at them, but they no longer seem grotesque.†   (source)
  • The woman then aborted spontaneously, and the nun who assisted at this grotesque delivery came away from the experience with blood on her hands.†   (source)
  • "The rumor is grotesque but true," Shaunee said.†   (source)
  • Mandy had a gasp, which occurred between sentences and at the end of certain words, with grotesque effect.†   (source)
  • Once, just after the Second World War, the Vienna Philharmonic experimented with an audition screen and ended up with what the orchestra's former chairman, Otto Strasser, described in his memoir as a "grotesque situation": "An applicant qualified himself as the best, and as the screen was raised, there stood a Japanese before the stunned jury."†   (source)
  • "Old State," that shining example of Institutional Grotesque that towered over the executive mansion.†   (source)
  • Prudence's stomach ballooned grotesquely, and she was spitting up blood.†   (source)
  • A pressure lamp dangled in front of his face, sending shadows lurching grotesquely up the walls.†   (source)
  • The mirror image changed, from my grotesque image to that of a bed, a girl sleeping in it.†   (source)
  • There were moments of grotesque humor.†   (source)
  • It was grotesque, really; it made her sick to her stomach just to think of it.†   (source)
  • It is grotesque.†   (source)
  • Today, in her slashed, naked starkness, her body was snarled in a freeze-frame of grotesque horror.†   (source)
  • But you must have all the things you never had of life and make of immortality a junk shop in which both of us become grotesque.†   (source)
  • His figure stood out grotesquely and his face, deformed by the light from below, floated halfway to the ceiling, while his giant shadow danced against the walls.†   (source)
  • They were grotesque, like useless young men in a depression.†   (source)
  • He rarely came home, and when he did it was with outlandish stories of what he'd seen: tall, grotesque foreigners with red beards, who had wives with waists so constricted that they couldn't breathe and huge feet that flip-flopped like just-caught fish.†   (source)
  • Sabina watched Franz walk across the room with the chair above his head; the scene struck her as grotesque and filled her with an odd sadness.†   (source)
  • Ghosh exposed the grotesquely distended abdomen.†   (source)
  • In the space of five months, something magical and grotesque transformed her.†   (source)
  • He studied the grotesque face and tried to place him.†   (source)
  • I shook him violently, seeing his head wobble grotesquely.†   (source)
  • He's American and his French is grotesque, but if you speak slow, he'll catch on.†   (source)
  • His grotesquely scarred muzzle was tilted up at her, as if daring her to move and he was panting in short, nervy snorts.†   (source)
  • She felt bloated, grotesque.†   (source)
  • All my magazine reading and overheard remarks fell at once into a grotesque but understandable pattern.†   (source)
  • Mutilated, dismembered, tortured bodies, ripped into grotesque shreds… I had clearly seen the vestigial feelers still attached to the truncated anterior section of a child.†   (source)
  • I scream, facing him, grotesquely shaking hands --dear long-lost brother, kinsman-thane--and the timbered hall screams back at me.†   (source)
  • But as soon as one was formed, it instantly liquefied and curdled into something grotesque.†   (source)
  • He became a doctor, and he treated poor people in the daytime, and he wrote grotesque novels all night.†   (source)
  • Despite his usual handsome features, he looks rather grotesque in the moonlight with all those streaks of dried blood running down his face.†   (source)
  • It was neither anger nor jealousy nor indignation, but the blank horror of dealing with the grotesquely senseless.†   (source)
  • This was the story he would tell: At the Institute the making of men was a kind of grotesque artistry.†   (source)
  • I flashed it with a grotesque pride.†   (source)
  • I don't know what to make of it, as it is at once so beautiful and so grotesque.†   (source)
  • Crowds of Earthmen, no two alike, rubbed shoulders with them in the crowded streets, and the sad light fell on many sad and grotesque faces.†   (source)
  • The sound is so grotesque that Mary collapses.†   (source)
  • Beorg eyed him curiously, but Heafstaag gave him a second grotesque wink to quench his suspicions.†   (source)
  • When conversations got bandied about in school, turning to the grotesque, Misty could charm the whole room with her coarseness.†   (source)
  • Grotesque incidents occur which help to sustain the general myth about the vicious and dangerous nature of the wolf.†   (source)
  • She smiled, but it was a grotesque imitation of a real smile.†   (source)
  • All your life you live so close to truth, it becomes a permanent blur in the comer of your eye, and when something nudges it into outline it is like being ambushed by a grotesque.†   (source)
  • On the shoulder of the road lay a woman, arms outstretched, one bare leg grotesquely twisted under her back.†   (source)
  • The grotesque hypocrisy slapped me as it does all Negroes.†   (source)
  • But it had been Pierce's domicile, and headquarters: the place he'd begun his land speculating in ten years ago, and so put down the plinth course of capital on which everything afterward had been built, however rickety or grotesque, toward the sky; and that, she supposed, would set the spot apart, give it an aura.†   (source)
  • And so during the next few days after getting news of her death, as the shock wore off and I was able to adopt what might be called a professional view of her grotesque ending, I was overtaken by a fabulous sense of discovery.†   (source)
  • In the prairie dog towns grotesque burrowing owls tilted on their long, slim legs and hissed and screeched.†   (source)
  • Why, I did not really know for a moment, until a grotesque vision of Hamlet filtered into my mind.†   (source)
  • They started to strike comic postures, each striving to outdo the other in their grotesque abandon.†   (source)
  • They listen, grotesquely rigid.†   (source)
  • If I was off at midnight, I dropped by her apartment to drink coffee and talk about the night's grotesque events, like any husband rehashing his day at the office.†   (source)
  • And then a sulphur match was struck and burned a tiny blue until the wood caught, lighting his brother's face grotesquely from below.†   (source)
  • It was then that he hated the grotesque steel cage that held him, had to force back the urge to fall upon the bars with his bare fists, to split the skulls of his guards and burst into the free, free space of London.†   (source)
  • The hollow cheeks and bulging stomachs, the grotesque, jutting bones, became matter for laughter; already, though they were still with us, in our minds they belonged to the past-to the painful past that we thrust from us with all our force; and the laughter was in some measure born of relief that we could do so.†   (source)
  • And in quiet derision Adams, who thought most members of the Senate "more grotesque than ridicule could make them," had replied, "If a Congressman is a hog, what is a Senator?"†   (source)
  • The truth is that never since has any passion I have felt remained so hopelessly unexpressed within me or appeared so grotesquely altered in the outward world.†   (source)
  • Mr. Powell, such a purpose is grotesque.†   (source)
  • He was tall and grotesquely thin, with sharply cut features, particularly a beaklike nose.†   (source)
  • She would talk for a few moments with a grotesque sprightliness that shocked Tony and made him uncomfortable.†   (source)
  • The most grotesque and fantastic conceits haunted him in his bed at night.   (source)
    grotesque = distorted
  • ...as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is...   (source)
    grotesque = distorted in a disturbing way (from what was imagined)
  • Most of those reports were a nightmare — grotesque, circumstantial, eager, and untrue.   (source)
    grotesque = distorted and ugly
  • I was fasting; for to eat, to fill myself with unassimilated matter, would be to become grotesquely visible again.   (source)
    grotesquely = unnatural in appearance in a disturbing way
  • I see it as a night scene by El Greco: a hundred houses, at once conventional and grotesque, crouching under a sullen, overhanging sky and a lustreless moon.   (source)
    grotesque = distorted in an unnatural way
  • I Couldn't sleep all night; a fog-horn was groaning incessantly on the Sound, and I tossed half-sick between grotesque reality and savage, frightening dreams.   (source)
    grotesque = distorted and ugly
  • Be sure they were grotesque. There were arabesque figures with unsuited limbs and appointments. There were delirious fancies such as the madman fashions. There was...   (source)
    grotesque = disturbingly distorted and unnatural
  • She went to the door, paused there for a moment, and then, grotesquely, blew him a kiss.†   (source)
  • She saw flames, and a grotesque face like something carved from bedrock.†   (source)
  • The effect of the overlarge eye against his otherwise handsome face is both grotesque and amusing.†   (source)
  • Langdon strained to comprehend the grotesque artifact now before him.†   (source)
  • That would be galling—grotesquely galling—after everything.†   (source)
  • Now here he was, as grotesque and chinless as ever.†   (source)
  • The convulsing bodies, the grotesque expressions.†   (source)
  • The worst of it was my mouth, a grotesque blob of purple and red, all bruise and stitches.†   (source)
  • One of them is that you may be the only responsible person left in this grotesque pile.†   (source)
  • But the grotesque part, he said, was her jewelry.†   (source)
  • But we need not stick to the most grotesque examples.†   (source)
  • Koop had a fit of grotesque movements like a jerked puppet.†   (source)
  • Perhaps once they had been lions, but now they were twisted and grotesque.†   (source)
  • When she turned around, the beautiful, innocent face was covered in grotesque scars.†   (source)
  • The masks stared down silently at Jason with their grotesque grape eyes and leafy tongues.†   (source)
  • The result is a grotesque, semi-feline mask, which now squints at us distrustfully.†   (source)
  • Malfoy made a grotesque face, his mouth sagging open and his eyes rolling.†   (source)
  • Rebecka's murder is the only grotesque crime that I could find with a connection to Hedestad.†   (source)
  • The father of Emeline Cigrand was grotesquely burned in a boiler explosion.†   (source)
  • Vader is one of the National Cathedral's most popular grotesques."†   (source)
  • There lay a man, flat on his back, his left leg turned grotesquely forward from the knee.†   (source)
  • As they passed the fortnight mark, they began to look grotesque.†   (source)
  • However sincere the lesson, the result is likely to be grotesque.†   (source)
  • The Sten gun slung over her shoulder should have been grotesquely out of place.†   (source)
  • The knight's leg was trapped, the arm he'd used to break his fall twisted at a grotesque angle.†   (source)
  • "Speaking for the grotesques," he said, "I beg to differ.†   (source)
  • 'Then I'll chop his feet!' shouted the grotesque figure, pulling a cleaver from his board.†   (source)
  • None of the baroque ecstasy, none of the grotesque compulsion.†   (source)
  • They had suddenly become grotesque, monstrous, figures escaped from her worst nightmares.†   (source)
  • They were spread out over the counter too, like a grotesque decoration.†   (source)
  • Something about the grotesque combination of lizard, insect, and alien made her stomach turn.†   (source)
  • His shiny dark hair was becoming thicker, and more hair sprouted grotesquely on his arms and hands.†   (source)
  • God would still hear her in this grotesquely evil place, wouldn't He?†   (source)
  • And he would make a grotesque error with Parc Monceau.†   (source)
  • One of the men at the bar tore himself free and exited in looping, grotesque strides.†   (source)
  • What she saw in the mirror was a thin, tattooed girl in grotesque underwear.†   (source)
  • It was a strangely froggy sound, grotesquely apt, and the girls giggled again.†   (source)
  • More garrons were strewn across the slope, legs twisted grotesquely, blind eyes staring in death.†   (source)
  • That was so grotesque it made Jaime laugh aloud.†   (source)
  • If not for Percy, those grotesque hags would have carried him away.†   (source)
  • A grinning, grotesque face loomed over him.†   (source)
  • Then I saw something even more grotesque.†   (source)
  • Angry and grotesque figures that appeared to be clawing at one another.†   (source)
  • Her bloody mouth made the smile grotesque, twisted.†   (source)
  • In another room I saw, like, Plexiglas boxes with some sort of grotesque tissue growing in them.†   (source)
  • I asked him why he kept her close, if he thought her so grotesque.†   (source)
  • You can see for yourself that her tattoos are grotesque and extend over large parts of her body.†   (source)
  • They were Halloween masks, grotesque and out of season, that fitted over the entire head.†   (source)
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