macabre

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“
New Yorker cartoons, the world of the macabre is at its best when juxtaposed with the world of the normal people, something at which this manga series is very good.

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Definitions (5)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (3)

  1. adjective Suggesting the horror of death and decay; gruesome: macabre tales of war and plague in the Middle Ages. See Synonyms at ghastly.
  2. adjective Constituting or including a representation of death.
  3. Word History
    The word macabre is an excellent example of a word formed with reference to a specific context that has long since disappeared for everyone but scholars. Macabre is first recorded in the phrase Macabrees daunce in a work written around 1430 by John Lydgate. Macabree was thought by Lydgate to be the name of a French author, but in fact he misunderstood the Old French phrase Danse Macabre, "the Dance of Death,” a subject of art and literature. In this dance, Death leads people of all classes and walks of life to the same final end. The macabre element may be an alteration of Macabe, "a Maccabee.” The Maccabees were Jewish martyrs who were honored by a feast throughout the Western Church, and reverence for them was linked to reverence for the dead. Today macabre has no connection with the Maccabees and little connection with the Dance of Death, but it still has to do with death.

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Examples (45)

  • The nearest comparison I can make is to the work of Jim Woodring: exotic, macabre, mysterious, disturbing, otherworldly On some nameless far-off planet, a plethora of bizarre creatures go through seven wordless stories depicting their outré daily behaviors. —  Magazine - Asimov's Science Fiction - 2007 - Issue 03 - March
  • A little macabre, a little odd, perhaps, but it has something. —  A Wreath for Rivera - also as Swing, Brother, Swing - Ngaio Marsh - Alleyn 15: 1949
  • The situation was so macabre, the possibilities so unpleasant, the characters so illustrious, and the explanations so humanly silly that it left him speechless. —  Coroner's Pidgin - Margery Allingham - Campion 12: 1945
  • The circumstances were macabre, the apparent weapon unlikely, but I accepted the weapon and rejoiced in the circumstances. —  Death At The Bar - Ngaio Marsh - Alleyn 09: 1940
  • CAT EYED BOY is a chilling concoction of dark vignettes dripping with the macabre, the grotesque and the absurd. —  Anime Nano!
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Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Used in the same context Used in the Same Context

gruesome ·  bizarre ·  horrify ·  surreal ·  ghoulish ·  wry ·  ironic ·  spooky ·  frighten ·  hilarious ·  nightmarish ·  comical
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (1)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Ultimately from Old French (Danse) Macabre, (dance) of death, perhaps alteration of Macabe, Maccabee, from Latin Maccabaeus, from Greek Makkabios.
 

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