9 uses
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Definition
distorted and unnatural in shape or size — especially in a disturbing way
or:
ugly, gross, or very wrong
or:
ugly, gross, or very wrong
- It was neither anger nor jealousy nor indignation, but the blank horror of dealing with the grotesquely senseless.3.4 Part 3 Chapter 4 — Anti-Life (84% in)
- It was a small, squat structure of unknown purpose, with massive stone walls, no windows except a few slits protected by stout iron bars, and a large dome, grotesquely too heavy for the rest, that seemed to press the structure down into the soil.3.3 Part 3 Chapter 3 — Anti-Greed (4% in)
- He was seeing the final contradiction, the grotesque absurdity at the end of the irrationalists' game: the men in Washington had hoped to hold him by prompting these three to try for the role of hostages.3.6 Part 3 Chapter 6 — The Concerto of Deliverance (30% in)
- ...and to know the minute when a train will arrive after crossing the span of a continent, we are expected to continue running steel mills and to know the molecular structure of every drop of metal in the cables of your bridges and in the body of the airplanes that support you in mid-airwhile the tribes of your grotesque little mystics of muscle fight over the carcass of our world, gibbering in sounds of non-language that there are no principles, no absolutes, no knowledge, no mind.3.7 Part 3 Chapter 7 — "This is John Galt Speaking" (55% in)
- From the rites of the jungle witch-doctors, which distorted reality into grotesque absurdities, stunted the minds of their victims and kept them in terror of the supernatural for stagnant stretches of centuriesto the supernatural doctrines of the Middle Ages, which kept men huddling on the mud floors of their hovels, in terror that the devil might steal the soup they had worked eighteen hours to earn-to the seedy little smiling professor who assures you that your brain has no capacity...3.7 Part 3 Chapter 7 — "This is John Galt Speaking" (63% in)
- But you, you grotesque little atavists, stare blindly at the skyscrapers and smokestacks around you and dream of enslaving the material providers who are scientists, inventors, industrialists.3.7 Part 3 Chapter 7 — "This is John Galt Speaking" (70% in)
- If you identify your actual belief, you will find a triple damnation —of yourself, of life, of virtue-in the grotesque conclusion you have reached: you believe that morality is a necessary evil.3.7 Part 3 Chapter 7 — "This is John Galt Speaking" (76% in)
- The modern mystics of muscle who offer you the fraudulent alternative of 'human rights' versus 'property rights,' as if one could exist without the other, are making a last, grotesque attempt to revive the doctrine of soul versus body.3.7 Part 3 Chapter 7 — "This is John Galt Speaking" (89% in)
- It took them a few stunned seconds to grasp it, while the cheerful, thumping chords went goose-stepping through the silence, sounding grotesquely irrelevant, like the mirth of a half-wit.3.8 Part 3 Chapter 8 — The Egoist (2% in)
There are no more uses of "grotesque" in Atlas Shrugged.
Typical Usage
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