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Grisly

Adjective
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Horrifying, gruesome, or dark and unpleasant; used in Gothic or war poetry to evoke visceral terror and graphic imagery.

Detailed Definition
Grisly is an older literary adjective for something fearsome or revolting. In the poem, it intensifies the image of cold and stillness by making the frost feel almost monstrous.
Example
Example in poetry:
“Or grisly frosts—first Autumn morns” gives grisly the sense of terrifying or ghastly; “The grisly spectre of the dead” reflects its older association with horror; “A grisly moon hung over the battlefield’s silence” creates a Gothic visual mood; “Not merely gray, the grisly sea seemed charged with dread” distinguishes emotional force from simple color description
Additional Notes
The word appears in an older, literary sense that may be less familiar than the common modern adjective 'grisly'.; Found in the poem, It was not Death, for I stood up by Emily Dickinson
Also Known As
gruesome horrifying ghastly
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