Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Causing grief, pain, or anguish: a grievous loss.
- adj. Serious or dire; grave: a grievous crime.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Causing grief or sorrow; afflictive; hard to bear; oppressive.
- Inflicting or capable of inflicting pain or suffering; distressing in act or use; fierce; savage.
- Atrocious; heinous; aggravated.
- Expressing grief or affliction; full of grief as, a grievous cry.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Causing grief or sorrow; painful; afflictive; hard to bear; offensive; harmful.
- adj. Characterized by great atrocity; heinous; aggravated; flagitious.
- adj. Full of, or expressing, grief; showing great sorrow or affliction.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. of great gravity or crucial import; requiring serious thought
- adj. causing fear or anxiety by threatening great harm
- adj. causing or marked by grief or anguish
- adj. shockingly brutal or cruel
Etymologies
- From grieve, from the Middle English greven, from the Old French grever, from Latin gravare (which means to burden). Developed in the 13th century. (Wiktionary)
- Anglo-Norman grevous, from grever, to harm, aggrieve, from Latin gravāre, to burden; see grieve. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“I use the word grievous to connote harms that are severe.”
“And that, Steve-o, is what we call a grievous moral error.”
“What makes them to the regenerate "not grievous," is faith which "overcometh the world" (1Jo 5: 4): in proportion as faith is strong, the grievousness of God's commandments to the rebellious flesh is overcome.”
“But that which makes the judgment the more grievous is that their hearts seem to be hardened under it.”
“The gate was arched like a great hall and over walls and roof ramped vines with grapes of many colours; the red like rubies and the black like ebonies; and beyond it lay a bower of trelliced boughs growing fruits single and composite, and small birds on branches sang with melodious recite, and the thousand-noted nightingale shrilled with her varied shright; the turtle with her cooing filled the site; the blackbird whistled like human wight47 and the ring-dove moaned like a drinker in grievous plight.”
“What’s grievous is not that the guy turned out to be blind but that Bush feels perfectly okay clowning around at a press conference while people he sent capriciously to war are dying in battle.”
“So there ` s another issue: why are doctors succumbing to the dollar and causing this kind of grievous harm to a person just because they can pay?”
“In one way, because the cause of anger, to wit, the inflicted injury, remains too long in a man's memory, the result being that it gives rise to a lasting displeasure, wherefore he is "grievous" and "sullen" to himself.”
“Ne the cursing ne malediction is not grievous which is changed into divine laud and praising.”
“Why this marriage should have been "grievous" to the father, Arthur Breese, I do not know, unless all army officers were classed among the ungodly by the very pious of those days.”
Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals In Two Volumes, Volume I.
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘grievous’.
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GRE 2014
abase, abate, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abjure, abortive, abound, abrasive, abreast, abridge and 1577 more...
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RELI - Genesis
Protagonists and relevant words in the Book of Creation (Source: King James Bible)
Laban, circumcise, beget, Esau, Rebekah, speckle, Sodom, Pharaoh, Canaanite, Canaan, Jacob, Lot and 1286 more...
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EN - eesily missspellable wirds
accessible, accommodate, achievement, acquaintance, address, advertisement, alleged, athletics, attendance, auxiliary, believe, challenge and 118 more...
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Wordly Wise Vocab 9
dumbfound, ensue, era, flourish, garrison, grievous, hoard, inundate, invincible, nomad, placate, principal and 3 more...
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Vocabtech9e
sacrifice, ruthless, recede, principal, nomad, invincible, inundate, hoard, grievous, garrison, flourish, era and 3 more...
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Words from poetry you write that you ...
See title
ireland, tattered, contents, silver, springs, waltz, spite, hammock, slackening, firmament, poesy, writ and 24 more...
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man gre
abase, abeyance, abreast, abscission, abscond, abyss, accede, accretion, acerbic, acidulous, acumen, adulterate and 481 more...
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big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6689 more...
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gre2
aberrant, aberration, aboveboard, abrasive, abstemious, acme, admonish, affable, affluent, alacrity, allegory, alleviate and 1824 more...
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jaradgiese's Words
paronomasia, ostensible, insouciant, sobriquet, burlesque, insalubrious, apotheosis, hyperbole, connubial, felicity, florid, conurbation and 642 more...
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GRE list #2
FOM - cards - 1/2
abjure, abscond, abstemious, accretion, acidulous, acme, adulterate, aerie, affected, aggrandize, alacrity, mitigate and 221 more...
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Revised GRE Wordlist_2013
Vocabulary building for my quest of GRE 2013
ephemeral, esoteric, rhetoric, censure, egregious, pittance, dupe, mulct, paucity, alacrity, maintain, laconic and 997 more...
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Mournful
Nouns meaning mournful.
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vocab
hard word word 4 strong vocab
ostracize, importune, impute, scintillate, mulct, deprecate, procrastinate, rusticate, vegetate, expiate, emulate, gesticulate and 345 more...
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lesson 9
dumbfound, ensue, era, flourish, garrison, grievous, hoard, inundate, invincible, nomad, placate, principal and 3 more...
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vocab9
dumbfound, ensue, era, flourish, garrison, grievous, hoard, inundate, invincible, nomad, placate, principal and 3 more...
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