different between unpleasant vs grisly

English

Etymology

From Middle English unplesaunt, equivalent to un- +? pleasant.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?n?plez?nt/

Adjective

unpleasant (comparative unpleasanter or more unpleasant, superlative unpleasantest or most unpleasant)

1. Not pleasant.
   • c. 1596, William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act III, Scene 2,^[1]

     O sweet Portia,

     Here are a few of the unpleasant’st words

     That ever blotted paper!

   • 1722, Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year, London: E. Nutt, p. 214,^[2]

     It was indeed one admirable piece of Conduct in the said Magistrates, that the Streets were kept constantly clear, and free from all manner of frightful Objects, dead Bodies, or any such things as were indecent or unpleasant, unless where any Body fell down suddenly or died in the Streets […]

   • 1811, Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility, Chapter 35,^[3]

     The very circumstance, in its unpleasantest form, which they would each have been most anxious to avoid, had fallen on them.

   • 1865, Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter 1,^[4]

     […] she had read several nice little histories about children who had got burnt, and eaten up by wild beasts and other unpleasant things, all because they would not remember the simple rules their friends had taught them […]

   • 1921, Walter de la Mare, Memoirs of a Midget, Chapter 37,^[5]

     And I dipped into novels so like the unpleasanter parts of my own life that they might just as well have been autobiographies.

Derived terms

• unpleasantness

Synonyms

• disagreeable

Translations

Anagrams

• pennatulas

English

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation, General American) IPA^(key): /????zli/
• Homophone: grizzly
• Hyphenation: gris?ly

Etymology 1

From Middle English grisely, grysly, grissli?, griselich, grislich, from Old English grisli? (“grisly, horrible; dreadful, horrid”), from gr?san (“to shudder with horror; to tremble, to be terrified; to make tremble, to terrify; to agrise, grise”) (unattested but implied in ?gr?san) + -lic (suffix forming adjectives meaning ‘characteristic of, pertaining to’).

The word may also be an aphetic form of Old English ongrislic, agrisenli?, the past participle of agr?san (“to agrise”).

Compare Danish grusom, Swedish gräslig, Middle Dutch grezelijc (modern Dutch griezelig), Middle High German grisenlich (modern German grässlich, grausen).

Adjective

grisly (comparative grislier, superlative grisliest)

1. Horrifyingly repellent; gruesome, terrifying.

   Synonyms: (obsolete) grisy, gristly, (misspellings) grizzly; see also Thesaurus:frightening
2. Misspelling of gristly.
3. Misspelling of grizzly.

Usage notes

Not to be confused with gristly or grizzly.

Alternative forms

• griesly, grislie (obsolete)

Derived terms

• grislily
• grisliness
• ungrisly

Related terms

• grise

Translations

Etymology 2

From grisle (“horror, terror”) +? -ly; compare Middle Dutch griselike, Middle Low German grislike.

Adverb

grisly (comparative more grisly, superlative most grisly)

1. (obsolete) In a horrible or terrible manner; in a terrifying way.

Synonyms

• grimly
• horribly
• terribly

References