Grim

How to spell grim

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce grim

What does grim mean?

1. adjectiveForbidding, harsh, or depressingly serious in appearance or outcome.

Grim in a sentence

• The surgeon wore a grim expression before delivering the news.

• The latest sales figures painted a grim picture for the company.

Where does grim come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Grim comes straight from Old English grimm, which meant fierce, savage, or cruel, and it sits among a family of related Germanic words including Old Norse grimmr and Old High German grimm. The deeper sense behind these forms is connected to anger and a kind of menacing severity, and an old related verb meant to rage or roar. Over the centuries the word softened from describing physical ferocity into the more familiar modern meanings of stern, forbidding, or gloomy. The famous Brothers Grimm carried the surname by coincidence rather than meaning, though their darker fairy tales make the pairing memorable. Because the word is short and phonetically regular, the spelling has stayed remarkably stable since Anglo-Saxon times.

How the word is built

• grim (whole Old English root meaning fierce or savage); no affixes