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grotesque
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  • 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
  • ...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)
  • Most of the stylists they interview on television are so dyed, stenciled, and surgically altered they're grotesque.†   (source)
  • It wasn't easy, because Hassan's upper lip was a grotesque mesh of swollen, raw tissue.†   (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)
  • Truly grotesque.†   (source)
  • Standing here and there like frozen party guests were Medusa's garden statues— petrified children, satyrs, and centaurs-all smiling grotesquely.†   (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)
  • The dead mammals were heaped together, a grotesque pile of decayed animal parts.†   (source)
  • He looked grotesque, and vaguely angry.†   (source)
  • Its body resembled a gigantic slug, sparsely covered in hair and glistening with slime, grotesquely pulsating in and out as it breathed.†   (source)
  • As though invisible strings were tied to Snape's wrists, neck, and knees, he was pulled into a standing position, head still lolling unpleasantly, like a grotesque puppet.†   (source)
  • Some were grotesquely fat, or weirdly over-muscled, or uncomfortably thin, and almost all of them had wrong, ugly proportions.†   (source)
  • CUT TO: BLACK-AND-WHITE SHOTS from various angles of body in grotesque position.†   (source)
  • The first boy moans grotesquely.†   (source)
  • Mrs. Poe purchased clothing for the orphans that was in grotesque colors, and itched.†   (source)
  • Twisted and turned, the camera perched precariously beside his ear, he felt like a circus 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)
  • And he was not at morning meeting on that February day, just before spring vacation; but the surrogate he had left onstage was grotesquely capable of holding our attention.†   (source)
  • Of course, she'd have to duel the grotesque one.†   (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)
  • A grotesquely ancient oak provided shelter from the biting wind.†   (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)
  • I sprang up, grabbed it, and then, in a fumbling and perhaps grotesque offering to Phineas, I chinned myself.†   (source)
  • But in the time it takes him to cover the distance, slip-stepping as if in some grotesque dance with the pigoons still staring, dark clouds have come boiling up from the south, blotting out the sun.†   (source)
  • Then, as Mercy stepped forward, one shoulder dipped and jerked back grotesquely, and Kit realized that she leaned on crutches.†   (source)
  • We have toured for five hundred years, bringing the grotesque to generation after generation.†   (source)
  • There was a grotesque thing in the safe room.†   (source)
  • Demeaning posters appeared in both Polish and German, depicting us as grotesque, filthy creatures, with large, crooked noses.†   (source)
  • Everything looks strange and grotesque and distorted, certain streets glittering with glass from smashed windows, the smell of burning in the air.†   (source)
  • The grotesque photo appeared on-screen again.†   (source)
  • It can be argued, for instance, that war is grotesque.†   (source)
  • The carts were piled dangerously high, and Amy topped each of them with a bunch of celery, like some grotesque centerpiece.†   (source)
  • As if somehow sharing a simple delight in the grotesqueness of that image, she smiled back, and the place noticeably brightened.†   (source)
  • winds from the peaks above, stairways— inside and out-carved from the mountain stone and leading 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 of the northeast face, their winged and hunchbacked shadows moving like grim sundial hours, cast by sunligh†   (source)
  • They mark special occasions, write horrible poetry, sketch things that are beautiful or grotesque, or just rant.†   (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)
  • Their injuries were grotesque.†   (source)
  • I looked down at my feet: my legs and ankles were swelling grotesquely.†   (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)
  • 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)
  • An empiricist of our own century, Bertrand Russell, has provided a more grotesque example.†   (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)
  • It seemed to be spreading, humped and knobbled and grotesquely misshapen— Clary tore her eyes away as Jace stood, pulling her after him.†   (source)
  • He wasn't, the psychologists surmised, because he had worked very hard to disguise his grotesque deficiencies from his teachers.†   (source)
  • "Old State," that shining example of Institutional Grotesque that towered over the executive mansion.†   (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)
  • 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)
  • We pulled, each crew against the rest, hauling our grotesquely unstreamlined little boats along.†   (source)
  • Having the respirator tube down her throat for 10 hours had puffed her lips badly, and her face looked grotesque.†   (source)
  • In an instant, the hissing, burning gas vapor lit the grotesque scene.†   (source)
  • The girl had been grotesquely tortured.†   (source)
  • It's a grotesque imitation, but convincing enough to let the Ra'zac approach their victims without undo alarm.†   (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)
  • A woman not five feet tall, with a grotesque, protruding stomach, was wheeling an old black baby carriage down the street.†   (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)
  • In the space of five months, something magical and grotesque transformed her.†   (source)
  • Excess, deterioration, self-destructiveness, grotesque behavior, a physical bloating and a series of insults to the brain, self-delivered.†   (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)
  • "Oh, everything's fine now," she said, and made a grotesquely girlish little skip, holding heavily onto Lincoln's hand.†   (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)
  • 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)
  • Prudence's stomach ballooned grotesquely, and she was spitting up blood.†   (source)
  • She'd thrown her head back and her lips were parted as if having the grotesque Elliott creature suck the blood from her arm was a sexual experience.†   (source)
  • Ghosh exposed the grotesquely distended abdomen.†   (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)
  • 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)
  • Elbows bent, hands on shoulders, she flailed her arms like a bird in an eternal, grotesquely futile effort to fly.†   (source)
  • Mandy had a gasp, which occurred between sentences and at the end of certain words, with grotesque effect.†   (source)
  • The mirror image changed, from my grotesque image to that of a bed, a girl sleeping in it.†   (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)
  • The statues are half man and half beast, grotesque, fantastic creatures with beaks and wings and tails.†   (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)
  • He became a doctor, and he treated poor people in the daytime, and he wrote grotesque novels all night.†   (source)
  • I scream, facing him, grotesquely shaking hands —dear long-lost brother, kinsman-thane—and the timbered hall screams back at me.†   (source)
  • Never mind the grotesque scarring, in another year or so, her mouth will be pulled permanently open.†   (source)
  • They were grotesque, like useless young men in a depression.†   (source)
  • It was grotesque, really; it made her sick to her stomach just to think of it.†   (source)
  • The face was roughly manlike but looked as though it had been skinned and the skull grotesquely lengthened.†   (source)
  • Today, in her slashed, naked starkness, her body was snarled in a freeze-frame of grotesque horror.†   (source)
  • They photographed and videoed Seth hanging with his eyes closed and his head twisted grotesquely to his right.†   (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)
  • This part of it would have been comical if the results were not so grotesque.†   (source)
  • She looked at the grotesque eating equipment Alexandra had put by his plate.†   (source)
  • There were moments of grotesque humor.†   (source)
  • A pressure lamp dangled in front of his face, sending shadows lurching grotesquely up the walls.†   (source)
  • I gaze at them, but they no longer seem grotesque.†   (source)
  • Something grotesque.†   (source)
  • All my magazine reading and overheard remarks fell at once into a grotesque but understandable pattern.†   (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)
  • I shook him violently, seeing his head wobble grotesquely.†   (source)
  • And he would make a grotesque error with Parc Monceau.†   (source)
  • She felt bloated, grotesque.†   (source)
  • I don't know what to make of it, as it is at once so beautiful and so grotesque.†   (source)
  • It was neither anger nor jealousy nor indignation, but the blank horror of dealing with the grotesquely senseless.†   (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)
  • An oil lantern threw grotesque shadows onto the walls.†   (source)
  • It is grotesque.†   (source)
  • Beorg eyed him curiously, but Heafstaag gave him a second grotesque wink to quench his suspicions.†   (source)
  • I flashed it with a grotesque pride.†   (source)
  • The sound is so grotesque that Mary collapses.†   (source)
  • When conversations got bandied about in school, turning to the grotesque, Misty could charm the whole room with her coarseness.†   (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 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)
  • 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)
  • This was the story he would tell: At the Institute the making of men was a kind of grotesque artistry.†   (source)
  • They listen, grotesquely rigid.†   (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)
  • In the prairie dog towns grotesque burrowing owls tilted on their long, slim legs and hissed and screeched.†   (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)
  • Grotesque incidents occur which help to sustain the general myth about the vicious and dangerous nature of the wolf.†   (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)
  • The grotesque hypocrisy slapped me as it does all Negroes.†   (source)
  • It grew until it was no longer his shadow but a grotesque outline.†   (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)
  • On the shoulder of the road lay a woman, arms outstretched, one bare leg grotesquely twisted under her back.†   (source)
  • They started to strike comic postures, each striving to outdo the other in their grotesque abandon.†   (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)
  • 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)
  • 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)
  • 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 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
  • It was a strangely froggy sound, grotesquely apt, and the girls giggled again.†   (source)
  • That would be galling—grotesquely galling—after everything.†   (source)
  • She saw flames, and a grotesque face like something carved from bedrock.†   (source)
  • The convulsing bodies, the grotesque expressions.†   (source)
  • The effect of the overlarge eye against his otherwise handsome face is both grotesque and amusing.†   (source)
  • She went to the door, paused there for a moment, and then, grotesquely, blew him a kiss.†   (source)
  • Langdon strained to comprehend the grotesque artifact now before him.†   (source)
  • Now here he was, as grotesque and chinless as ever.†   (source)
  • The worst of it was my mouth, a grotesque blob of purple and red, all bruise and stitches.†   (source)
  • As they passed the fortnight mark, they began to look grotesque.†   (source)
  • One of them is that you may be the only responsible person left in this grotesque pile.†   (source)
  • There lay a man, flat on his back, his left leg turned grotesquely forward from the knee.†   (source)
  • But the grotesque part, he said, was her jewelry.†   (source)
  • Malfoy made a grotesque face, his mouth sagging open and his eyes rolling.†   (source)
  • Her bloody mouth made the smile grotesque, twisted.†   (source)
  • The father of Emeline Cigrand was grotesquely burned in a boiler explosion.†   (source)
  • The result is a grotesque, semi-feline mask, which now squints at us distrustfully.†   (source)
  • They're sitting in a semi-circle around a grotesque-looking figure, a scarecrowlike effigy.†   (source)
  • There's nothing grotesque, or mangled—or even raw-looking—about the stump.†   (source)
  • When she turned around, the beautiful, innocent face was covered in grotesque scars.†   (source)
  • Rebecka's murder is the only grotesque crime that I could find with a connection to Hedestad.†   (source)
  • But we need not stick to the most grotesque examples.†   (source)
  • I think he is dying as clumsily and grotesquely as humans often die in this century ....of old age.'†   (source)
  • The masks stared down silently at Jason with their grotesque grape eyes and leafy tongues.†   (source)
  • Vader is one of the National Cathedral's most popular grotesques.†   (source)
  • Perhaps once they had been lions, but now they were twisted and grotesque.†   (source)
  • However sincere the lesson, the result is likely to be grotesque.†   (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)
  • If not for Percy, those grotesque hags would have carried him away.†   (source)
  • God would still hear her in this grotesquely evil place, wouldn't He?†   (source)
  • They were spread out over the counter too, like a grotesque decoration.†   (source)
  • A grinning, grotesque face loomed over him.†   (source)
  • That was so grotesque it made Jaime laugh aloud.†   (source)
  • He's American and his French is grotesque, but if you speak slow, he'll catch on.†   (source)
  • But as soon as one was formed, it instantly liquefied and curdled into something grotesque.†   (source)
  • His shiny dark hair was becoming thicker, and more hair sprouted grotesquely on his arms and hands.†   (source)
  • Something about the grotesque combination of lizard, insect, and alien made her stomach turn.†   (source)
  • They had suddenly become grotesque, monstrous, figures escaped from her worst nightmares.†   (source)
  • More garrons were strewn across the slope, legs twisted grotesquely, blind eyes staring in death.†   (source)
  • One of the men at the bar tore himself free and exited in looping, grotesque strides.†   (source)
  • None of the baroque ecstasy, none of the grotesque compulsion.†   (source)
  • "The rumor is grotesque but true," Shaunee said.†   (source)
  • What she saw in the mirror was a thin, tattooed girl in grotesque underwear.†   (source)
  • How cruel humanity is when it beholds only the grotesque in the Mandys of this world.†   (source)
  • Koop had a fit of grotesque movements like a jerked puppet.†   (source)
  • He studied the grotesque face and tried to place him.†   (source)
  • Prusias recoiled the instant he saw her, as though she were something grotesque and poisonous.†   (source)
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