grotesque

English

WOTD – 15 July 2008

Etymology

From Middle French grotesque (French grotesque), from Italian grottesco (“of a cave”), from grotta. Compare English grotto.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ɡɹəʊˈtɛsk/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ɡɹoʊˈtɛsk/

• Audio (US):

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• Audio (General Australian):

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• Rhymes: -ɛsk

Adjective

grotesque (comparative grotesquer, superlative grotesquest)

1. Distorted and unnatural in shape or size; abnormal, especially in a hideous way.

   Coordinate term: baroque

   • 1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XV, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume III, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 114:

     The chimney-piece was of party-coloured marble, covered with figures, some of whose faces were beautiful, but generally running off into those grotesque combinations which characterised the peculiar taste of their time.

   • 1912, The World's Wit and Humor, page 176:

     A Libyan longing took us, and we would have chosen, if we could, to bear a strand of grotesque beads, or a handful of brazen gauds, and traffic them for some sable maid with crisp locks, whom, uncoffling from the captive train beside the desert, we should make to do our general housework forever, through the right of lawful purchase.

   • 2019 April 10, qntm, “CASE HATE RED”, in SCP Foundation‎^[1], archived from the original on 29 May 2024:

     Some of the vehicles are, indeed, taxis, but all of them are unoccupied, and most have their doors left open. There are colossally tall darkened figures stalking down the streets, so dark and slender that Wheeler actually fails to notice them. There is screaming, a grotesque, awful screaming coming from many human mouths, coming from somewhere down the main road. But that's the only way he can go.

2. Disgusting or otherwise viscerally revolting.

   Synonym: gross

3. (typography) Sans serif.

Derived terms

• grody
• grotesquely
• grotesqueness
• grotty
• guro, ero-guro

Translations

distorted and unnatural in shape or size; abnormal and hideous

• Arabic: غَرِيب (ar) (ḡarīb)
• Bulgarian: странен (bg) (stranen), уродлив (bg) (urodliv)
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 怪模怪樣 / 怪模怪样 (zh) (guàimúguàiyàng)

• Crimean Tatar: acayip
• Danish: grotesk
• Dutch: grotesk (nl)
• Esperanto: groteska (eo)
• Finnish: groteski (fi), irvokas (fi)
• French: grotesque (fr)
• Galician: grotesco m
• German: grotesk (de)
• Hebrew: גרוטסקה (he) (groteska)
• Hindi: विकृत (hi) (vikŕt), बेडौल (hi) (beḍaul), विरूप (hi) (virūp), कुरूप (hi) (kurūp)
• Hungarian: groteszk (hu)
• Italian: grottesco (it)
• Japanese: グロテスクな (ja) (gurotesuku-na), グロな (guro-na), グロい (guroi)
• Norwegian: grotesk (no)
• Polish: groteskowy (pl)
• Portuguese: grotesco (pt)
• Romanian: grotesc (ro)
• Russian: гроте́скный (ru) (grotésknyj)
• Spanish: grotesco (es)
• Swedish: grotesk (sv)
• Turkish: grotesk (tr), acayip (tr)

Noun

grotesque (countable and uncountable, plural grotesques)

2. A style of ornamentation characterized by fanciful combinations of intertwined forms.
3. Anything grotesque.
   • 2009, Emily Chivers Yochim, Skate Life, page 128:

     Obese and largely unintelligible, Don Vito represents a working-class white male grotesque, the picture of excess.

   • 2016 February 23, Robbie Collin, “Grimsby review: ' Sacha Baron Cohen's vital, venomous action movie'”, in The Daily Telegraph (London):

     He’s also the new character from Sacha Baron Cohen, the man behind Ali G, Borat and Brüno: that unholy trinity of comic grotesques that told us a lot more about ourselves than we’d like to admit.

4. (typography) A sans serif typeface.

Verb

grotesque (third-person singular simple present grotesques, present participle grotesquing or grotesqueing, simple past and past participle grotesqued)

1. (transitive) To make grotesque.
   • 1875, Robert Browning, Aristophanes’ Apology […], London: Smith, Elder, & Co., […], →OCLC, page 27:

     Why, when I saw that bestiality— / So beyond all brute-beast imagining, / That when, to point the moral at the close, / Poor Salabaccho, just to show how fair / Was ‘Reconciliation,’ stripped her charms, / That exhibition simply bade us breathe, / Seemed something healthy and commendable / After obscenity grotesqued so much / It slunk away revolted at itself.

   • 1891 December 19, “Dante”, in The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science, and Art, volume LXXII, number 1,886, London: […], →OCLC, page 707, column 2:

     This is to grotesque Dante, not to translate him.

   • 2010, Mark Driscoll, “Introduction”, in Absolute Erotic, Absolute Grotesque: The Living, Dead, and Undead in Japan’s Imperialism, 1895–1945, Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, →ISBN, page 11:

     At this point, species is seen antagonistically by the subject as something intent on restricting its freedom and grotesqueing its vitality.

   • 2013, Mark Duffett, “Filking”, in Understanding Fandom: An Introduction to the Study of Media Fan Culture, New York, N.Y.; London: Bloomsbury Academic, →ISBN, “Fan practices” section, page 187:

     Filking also allows fans to ‘answer back’ by reworking – resisting, grotesquing or parodying – the negative media stereotypes thrown at them.

Further reading

• Grotesque in the 1905 edition of the New International Encyclopedia.

French

Etymology

From Middle French grotesque, from Italian grottesco (“of a cave”), from grotta.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ɡʁɔ.tɛsk/

• Audio (Paris):

  (file)

• Audio:

  (file)

Adjective

grotesque (plural grotesques)

1. farcical (ridiculous)
2. grotesque

Noun

grotesque m (plural grotesques)

1. grotesqueness

Descendants

• → Romanian: grotesc

Further reading

• “grotesque”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

Middle French

Alternative forms

• crotesque

Etymology

From Italian grottesco.

Adjective

grotesque m or f (plural grotesques)

1. farcical (ridiculous)

Descendants

• → English: grotesque
• French: grotesque
  • → Romanian: grotesc

Noun

grotesque f (plural grotesques)

1. small cave
2. ornament

References

• Godefroy, Frédéric, Dictionnaire de l’ancienne langue française et de tous ses dialectes du IX^e au XV^e siècle (1881) (grotesque, supplement)