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Grisly   Listen
adjective
Grisly  adj.  Frightful; horrible; dreadful; harsh; as, grisly locks; a grisly specter. "Grisly to behold." "A man of grisly and stern gravity."
Grisly bear. (Zool.) See under Grizzly.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Grisly" Quotes from Famous Books



... in bondage base existence lay, Bent down by Superstition's iron sway. She from the heavens disclosed her monstrous head, And dark with grisly aspect, scowling dread, Hung o'er the sons of men; but toward the skies A man of Greece dared lift his mortal eyes, And first resisting stood. Not him the fame Of deities, the lightning's forky flame, Or muttering murmurs of the threat'ning sky Repressed; but roused his ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... artist who had journeyed from far to see the summer's sun upon the Rhine water, and who came to Oppenheim in the golden dusk, was too intent on the search for beauty to remember the grisly reputation of the town. Moreover, on entering the place the first person by whom he had been greeted was a beautiful young maiden, daughter of the innkeeper, who modestly shrank back on hearing his confident ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence

... clown. He itched with love, and then did sing or say; The noise was such as all the nymphs did frown, And well suspected that some ass did bray. The woods did chide to hear this ugly sound The prating echo scorned for to repeat; This grisly voice did fear the hollow ground, Whilst artless fingers did his harpstrings beat. Two bear-whelps in his arms this monster bore, With these new puppies did this wanton play; Their skins was rough but yet your loves was more; He fouler was and far more fierce ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher

... the command, "Laukapalili!" a vision of her recreant husband appeared. The father and mother of the prince were joint witnesses with the wife of his faithlessness. As the picture vanished the air grew dark; faint, grisly shapes arose, and wailing voices sounded, "Heaven has fallen!" Standing on the rainbow bridge, the father, mother, and wife cast off their love for the prince, and condemned him to be a wandering ghost, living on butterflies. Then, having tired of heaven, the Lady ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner

... brave who is young and strong and active; whose eye is quick and his hand steady; whose heart never comes into his throat when danger faces him; whose face does not grow pale at the sight of approaching death; whose heart is as the heart of the grisly bear for courage, and yet tender as the heart of a Paleface squaw; whose hand can accomplish whatever his head plans, and whose tongue is able to make a sick ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne

... saw two poor serving-men struggling with a hag dressed all in armour. Behind her came eight others. And their eyes, from between the bars of their helms, shone with a horrible red fire, and from each point of their armour sparks flashed, and the swords in their grisly hands gleamed with a blue flame, so fierce and so terrible that it scorched the eyes to ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert

... in some scarlet material. Its face was a grisly black and below the nose appeared what seemed a horrible gash. It advanced towards them, smoking ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse

... jail being flung open from within, there appeared, in the first place, like a black shadow emerging into sunshine, the grim and grisly presence of the town-beadle, with a sword by his side, and his staff of office in his hand. This personage prefigured and represented in his aspect the whole dismal severity of the Puritanic code of law, which it was his business to administer in its final and closest application ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... encircling arms fell away. The grisly smashed face was white with ooze and pulp where my fist had ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings

... toward the centre of the Place de Greve was sufficient to inform the dullest, for there uprose, black, grisly, horrible, a tall stout pile of some thirty feet in height, with a huge wheel affixed horizontally to ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various

... The grisly child of Erebus the grim, Who saw these tumults done and tempest spent, Gainst stream of grace who ever strove to swim And all her thoughts against Heaven's wisdom bent, Departed now, bright Titan's beams were dim And fruitful lands waxed barren as she went. She sought ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso

... of a bodkin - sight inconceivable. Never mind; dress clothes, 'which nobody can deny'; and the officials have been all so civil that I liked neither to refuse nor to appear in mufti. Bad dress clothes only prove you are a grisly ass; no dress clothes, even when explained, indicate a want of respect. I wish you were here with me to help me dress in this wild raiment, and to accompany me to M. Noel-Pardon's. I cannot say what I would give if there came a knock ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... determined to go and speak to the other ghost as soon as it was daylight. Accordingly, just as the dawn was touching the hills with silver, he returned towards the spot where he had first laid eyes on the grisly phantom, feeling that, after all, two ghosts were better than one, and that, by the aid of his new friend, he might safely grapple with the twins. On reaching the spot, however, a terrible sight met his gaze. Something had evidently happened to the spectre, for the light had entirely faded from its ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde

... Suddenly a grisly silence fell upon the house. For the Kid, battered, but obviously content, was standing in the middle of the ring, while on the ropes the Cyclone, drooping like a wet sock, was ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse

... eagle screams, and passes by. Dear lost companions of my tuneful art, Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes, Dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart, Ye died amidst your dying country's cries— No more I weep. They do not sleep. On yonder cliffs, a grisly band, I see them sit, they linger yet, Avengers of their native land: With me in dreadful harmony they join, And weave with bloody hands ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various

... on ancient tombs thou tak'st thy stand, By gibbering spectres hailed, thy kindred band; Or tracest chaste descriptions on thy page To please the females of our modest age; All hail, M.P., from whose infernal brain Thin-sheeted phantoms glide, a grisly train; At whose command 'grim women' throng in crowds And kings of fire, of water, and of clouds With small grey men—wild yagers and what not, To crown with honour thee and Walter Scott; Again, all hail! if tales like thine may please, St. Luke alone can vanquish the disease. Even Satan's ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead

... near Sattell he literally recovered them—in the sense that he came to know new things about them and had new memories of them every day. He hadn't yet remembered the crime which lost them to him. Until he did—and the fact possessed a certain grisly humor—Pop didn't even hate Sattell. He simply wanted to be near him because it enabled him to recover new and vivid parts of his ...
— Scrimshaw • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... no one to credit. Retrospectively, I myself have doubted it. It lives in my memory as a grisly nightmare rather than as a fact. To be brief, I returned to the scene of the crime, shut out any possible audience by closing the door, and disrobed hastily. Then I removed the leather costume of the victim, donned ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti

... he said "Fight on! fight on!" Tho' his vessel was all but a wreck; And it chanced that, when half of the short summer night was gone, 65 With a grisly wound to be drest he had left ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty

... the signs of the times in literature, not of one country but of all, is a grim change in its attitude towards war. The era of pomp and circumstance, as of genial make-believe, is gone by; more and more are our writers beginning to give us militarism stripped of romance, a grisly but (I suppose) useful picture. I have nowhere found it more horrible than in a story called The Secret Battle (METHUEN), written by Mr. A.P. HERBERT, whose initials are familiar to Punch readers ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 4, 1919. • Various

... pity, and it is rumored that they are collecting a purse to help us on our way. At last our father returns, striving to hide his solicitude in a smile, for no fate to which they could consign himself would scathe that grisly servant of his Master; but for his family, who do not altogether share the spirit of his mission, he has a little fear. He kisses us all in order, from the least to the biggest, commencing and ending with our mother, and playfully prevaricates as to our "appointment," the name of which we noisily ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend

... a grisly bear, and Siegfried, seeing it, jumped from his charger, chased it, and having at length caught it with his strong right hand, bound it without receiving even a scratch from its claws or a bite ...
— Stories of Siegfried - Told to the Children • Mary MacGregor

... sierra of broken pinnacles and crags which had all the semblance of a weathered and dismantled castle. It stood out against the tender blue of the morning sky like the ancient stronghold of some grisly robber-baron of medieval days; towers of dark sublimity, battlements whence invaders might have been hurled a thousand feet to death, slender minarets, escarpments and rugged casements through which fleecy clouds peeped from ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... The girl pointed to the long double row of grisly wooden edifices down the street. "Them's Sadler's Shacks on this side, and Tammany Barracks on the other. They go all the way ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... of the American idioms and of expressions transferred from the jargon of Decadence and the Parnassiculet Contemporain. As one peruses these novels one thinks of a new tale to be told—The Last of the Fashionables, who died away, like the buffalo and the grisly bear, in some canon or forest of the Wild West. I think this distinguished being, Ultimus hominum venustiorum, will find the last remnants of the Gentlemanly Party in some Indian tribe, Apaches or Sioux. I see him raised to the rank of chief, and leading the red-skinned ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang

... tavern, the bandits gayly drink, Upon the haunted highway, sharp hoof-beats loudly clink? Yea; past scant-buried victims, hard-spurring sturdy steed, A mute and grisly rider is trampling grass and weed, And by the black-sealed warrant which in his grasp shines clear, I known it is the Future—God's ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo

... rock to rock and clinging to the bushes. A mile up the valley we came suddenly upon a plateau, and saw before us the remains of an ancient Pekia, or High Place, a grim and grisly monument of the days of evil ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... vengeful aspect, the grisly ghost of Tomomori (rises) at the stern of the ship to hinder the ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn

... Bukloh to his own place to fare, So if ye gallop to Fort Bukloh as fast as a bird can fly, By the favor of God ye may cut him off ere he win to the Tongue of Jagai, But if he be passed the Tongue of Jagai, right swiftly turn ye then, For the length and the breadth of that grisly plain is sown with Kamal's men. There is rock to the left, and rock to the right, and low lean thorn between, And ye may hear a breech-bolt snick where never a man is seen." The Colonel's son has taken a horse, ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various

... dainties of the land. When lo, with sudden dreadful rush from out the mountains hap The Harpy folk, and all about their clanging wings they flap, And foul all things with filthy touch as at the food they wrench, And riseth up their grisly ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil

... lake and river.[572] Their power, though limited, was not annihilated, but the secrecy in which the old cults often continued to be practised gave them a darker colour. They were identified with the works of the devil, and the spirits of paganism with dark and grisly demons.[573] This culminated in the mediaeval witch persecutions, for witchcraft was in part the old paganism in a new guise. Yet even that did not annihilate superstition, which still lives and flourishes ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch

... Wizard's feet their spoils he hurled, - Ingots of ore from rich Potosi borne, Crowns by Caciques, aigrettes by Omrahs worn, Wrought of rare gems, but broken, rent, and foul; Idols of gold from heathen temples torn, Bedabbled all with blood.—With grisly scowl The Hermit marked the stains, and ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott

... The simple, grisly truth of the words—words that he might have spoken as well—stirred the man to the deeps of his being. He shuddered, as he turned his eyes to avoid seeing the thing that lay so very near, mercifully merged within the shadows beyond the gentle radiance ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana

... door but one. A thrill of fear came over him on finding himself so near the residence of his indignant friend, but it was of momentary duration, and he soon entered the courtyard of No. 3—where he was directed by an unshaved grisly-looking porter, to proceed "un troisieme," and ring the bell at the door on the right-hand side. Obedient to his directions, the Yorkshireman proceeded to climb a wide but dirty stone staircase, with carved and gilded balusters, whose ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees

... which, as irrecoverably gone, it was useless to regret, even were there cause to regret it, what should I do in future? Should I write another book like the Life of Joseph Sell; take it to London, and offer it to a publisher? But when I reflected on the grisly sufferings which I had undergone whilst engaged in writing the Life of Sell, I shrank from the idea of a similar attempt; moreover, I doubted whether I possessed the power to write a similar work—whether the materials for the life of another Sell lurked within the ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... this were divine chastisement? what if all the outer and inner dreariness that had so steadily enveloped me since I had witnessed the tragedy were punishment for my disbelief? what if this water were really holy, and my sacrilege had brought some grisly Nemesis?" ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... accounts for my possession of a good many anonymous memories. In de Barral's case, he got put away in my mausoleum in company with so many names of his own creation that really he had to throw off a monstrous heap of grisly bones before he stood before me at the call of the wizard Fyne. The fellow had a pretty fancy in names: the "Orb" Deposit Bank, the "Sceptre" Mutual Aid Society, the "Thrift and Independence" Association. Yes, a very pretty taste in names; and nothing else besides—absolutely nothing—no ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad

... doleful sight that then we see! We turn'd our look, and on the other side A grisly shape of Famine might we see: With greedy looks, and gaping mouth, that cried And roar'd for meat, as she should there have died; Her body thin and bare as any bone, Whereto was left ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... own environment, to be sure, was not of the grisly and mortuary character thus energetically described by the poet His pipe was in his hand. His broad, bald, red face, ending in an auburn spade-shaped beard, wore the air of content. Around him were old books that had belonged to ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang

... forthcoming. The people who lived on the first floor were out as usual, but had left their rent. Of the two rooms at the top, one was just now vacant. Waymark went on to the two or three houses that remained. On turning back, he met Slimy at the door; the man nodded in his wonted way, grinning like a grisly phantom, and beckoned Waymark to follow him upstairs. The woman below had closed her door again, and in all probability no one observed ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing

... reliance that none else could give, yet the repose was disturbed by the pang of recollection that the secret laid on her was their first severance. It was unjust to his kindness; strange, doubtful, nay grisly, to her foreboding mind, and she shivered alike from that and the chill of the damp cavern, and then he drew her cloak more closely about her, and halted to ask for the flask of wine which one of the adventurous spirits had brought, that Queen Elizabeth's health might be ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... room was wild and grisly with blood and the smell of burnt flesh, and David lay face downwards on the floor, writhing as the echoes of Paul's shrieks tortured his ears. But in the next room little Paul was still for ever, and all the ghostly labor was to ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon

... his men fell on the sleeping army, and had slain three hundred in a very short time, while he made his way to the royal tent, cut the ropes, and as the boy, "a soldier then for holidays," awoke, "by his couch, a grisly chamberlain," stood the Black Lord James! His chaplain threw himself between, and fell in the struggle, while Edward crept out under the canvas, and others of the household came to his rescue. The whole army was now awakened, and Douglas fought his way out on the other side of ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... that stares me in the face every waking hour, like a grisly spectre with bloody fang and claw, is the extermination of species. To me, that is a horrible thing. It is wholesale murder, no less. It is capital crime, and a black disgrace to the races of civilized ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday

... beneath its surface. Their grisly shapes vivid in the disturbed phosphorescence, drawing a wake of flame behind them, rushed two great sharks. Hither and thither they darted, every detail of their ugly forms discernible on the framing of the phosphorescent ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford

... Franklin had been the first to get large. And at once he had turned on them. Franklin, the weakling who dared not have any rivalry! And now Franklin was outside, out in the hills, a raging, murderous monster. For a moment, in the grisly shambles of the little cave Lee stood transfixed. Then his hand was fumbling at his belt. ...
— The World Beyond • Raymond King Cummings

... only class of scenes, so far as my investigation has taught me, in which our ancestors were wont to steep their tough old hearts in wine and strong drink and indulge in an outbreak of grisly jollity. Look back through all the social customs of New England in the first century of her existence and read all her traits of character, and find one occasion other than a funeral feast where jollity was sanctioned by universal practice.... Well, old friends! Pass ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle

... boy (and a sufferer from nasal catarrh at that) speaking a piece at a Sunday-school treat. The recollection of the hideous depression and gloom which the leading comedian had radiated in great clouds fled from him like some grisly nightmare before the goddess of day. Every cell in his brain was occupied, to the exclusion of all other thoughts, by the girl swimming in ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... he drew his breath in hard puffs; his knotted throat twitched and swelled, while they (the man and the brute) strove within him; and all the time he stood staring in grisly silence at ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook

... been had the ship gone down in deep water, leaving me safe, but deprived of all the stores she contained. The long, lingering agony, the starvation, the madness of thirst, and finally a horrible death on that far-away strip of sand, and another skeleton added to that grisly pile! ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont

... proves," she said hotly. "Dan, I've been thinking grisly things of you. I simply can't believe them now that I ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand

... tigers. And elephants with the juice trickling down from rent temples, plunging in the stream, sported with the she-elephants and made the entire region resound with their roars. And the place also echoed with the loud roars of lions and tigers, while at intervals might be seen those grisly monarchs of the forest lying stretched in caves and glens and beautifying them with their presence. And such was the asylum, like unto heaven itself, of Dadhicha, that the gods entered. And there they beheld Dadhicha looking like the sun himself in splendour ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

... sweat shop or tenement. You shall make them in your own shop or not at all." He will not be hurt, for all will have to do alike. I am rather inclined to think that he will be glad to take that way out of a grisly plight. ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis

... is TIM, where PRUE, alack! Where mother fondly pliant now? Where for that matter too is JACK, And where the grisly Giant now? In lonely stall, with vacant brow I sit and eye the coryphees: In my time they were Fairies; now They seem to me but ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 17, 1891 • Various

... indicator before the Admiral: whereupon he touches a button—many buttons—in intense succession: the Boodah bawls: and the thrust-back of her resentment becomes intolerable, the ships just like fawns under the paws of an old lion whose grisly jaws drip gore; the sharks that infest her will ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel

... series from the earliest records to those of a comparatively modern date. They may in point of style appear at the commencement stiff and stalwart, like the chiselled warriors, whose deeds are generally enveloped in a rude narrative, hard and ponderous as their gaunt and grisly effigies. The events, however, as the author has found them, gradually assimilate with the familiar aspects and everyday affections of our nature—subsiding from the stern and repulsive character of a barbarous ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... gave a little whimper as Robinson stooped and patted him, but no sign of positive recognition, but he pattered into the house. Robinson followed him, and there he found the man he had come to see—stretched on his bed—pale and hollow-eyed and grisly—and looking like a ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... that gather round the throne. When war dismays my barons bold, 'tis time for war to cease; When Heaven forsakes my pious monks the will of Heaven is peace. Go forth, my monks, with mass and rood the Norman camp unto, And to the fold, with shepherd crook, entice this grisly Rou. ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... lightning-flash, and I saw. Stark against the glare rose black shaft and crossbeam, wherefrom swung a creaking shape of rusty chains and iron bands that held together something shrivelled and black and wet with rain, a grisly thing that leapt on the buffeting wind, that strove and jerked as it would fain break free and hurl itself down ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol

... though a little grisly, struck Dan as a good joke. He hit the companionable Boardman on the shoulder, and then gave him a little hug, and remounted his path of air, and walked ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... Pan-Hellenic meeting occurred, Mr. Cuyler rose to his highest triumphs. It was perhaps a frame celluloid goods factory in Long Island City, which some soul-compelling voice had just finished describing, accoutering the grisly thing in all the garments of verbal glory. One gathered that the Guardian's fate hung on the acceptance of this translucent risk, that it was a prize saved from the clutches of a hundred grasping ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble

... luxury among the flesh-pots and easy ways of Paris; his bachelor apartments, occupied in name by him but of which the real tenant was his dreaded master. And behind all this apprehension lurked another grisly and terrible fear! For the twentieth time during the last few minutes he peered through the closely drawn Venetian-blind, and his blood ran cold. On the pavement opposite, before the small table of a cafe, a man was sitting—the same man! For two days ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... I've showed you the skeleton in my cupboard—and he's a pretty grisly object, isn't he? But I don't want to depress you with a recital of my woes. After all, life's sweet, sister—and you and I, thanks be to God, have the soul of the gipsy within us, which is made quite happy, poor feckless ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes

... catch of its lilt, would suddenly make me start up, wide awake, with every nerve in my body dancing to its grisly measure. ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... the path of death that now we tread At every step my soul grows more serene. When I implor'd Apollo to remove The grisly band of Furies from my side, He seem'd, with hope-inspiring, godlike words, To promise aid and safety in the fane Of his lov'd sister, who o'er Tauris rules. Thus the prophetic word fulfils itself, That with my life shall terminate my woe. How easy 'tis for me, whose heart is crush'd, Whose ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... he straightway amongst them his grisly form cast, And breathed on each puffing red face as he pass'd; And the eyes of the feasters wax'd deadly and chill, And their stomachs once heaved, and for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... but O'Ryan found in this grisly contest a vaster trial of strength than in the fight upon the stage a few hours ago. The first lunge that Vigon made struck him on the tip of the shoulder and drew blood; but he caught the hand ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker

... side, and as serious on the other as anything could be among such light spirits as had sworn allegiance to the Maypole. The future complexion of New England was involved in this important quarrel. Should the grisly saints establish their jurisdiction over the gay sinners, then would their spirits darken all the clime and make it a land of clouded visages, of hard toil, of sermon and psalm for ever; but should the banner-staff of Merry Mount be fortunate, sunshine would break upon the ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... be pinched to find out Johnie Mortsheugh," said the elder sibyl, and still her withered cheek bore a grisly smile; "he dwells near the Tod's Hole, an house of entertainment where there has been mony a blythe birling, for death and drink-draining are ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... awfully upset about it, he was such a cheery little chap. He was killed quite—nastily." She hesitated to give the grisly details, but Tam, who had seen the effect of high explosive bombs, had no difficulty in reconstructing the scene where Hector laid down his ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace

... As Marsh read this grisly list from his notebook, it suddenly came into my mind that in my explorations years ago I had seen this poster at many points, all along the waterfront. It had made no impression on me then, for it had ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole

... often in terror, pursued by sheets of flame, or falling through unfathomed space; haunted all through by a sense of doom, an awful expectancy—like one approaching some grisly Atreus-threshold and conscious of the death behind it. But sleep seized her again, a cold tormented sleep, and the ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... sleep, his meat, his drink, in him bereft, That lean he waxeth, and dry as a shaft, His eyes hollow and grisly to behold, His hew pale and ashen to unfold, And solitary he was ever alone, And waking all the ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... driver's other ear; but which missed it, and hit him on the nose, causing a terrible effusion of blood. Now, who or what fearful apparition was inflicting this punishment on the poor fellow remained an impenetrable mystery to me. The blows were given by a person of grisly aspect, with a head almost bald, and sunken cheeks, apparently of the feminine gender, though hardly to be classed in the gentler sex. There being no teeth to modulate the voice, it had a mumbled fierceness, not passionate, but stern, which absolutely made me quiver like calf's-foot ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... bright cities of the East. No fragile bark is this, carving a dubious course through the main, as Seneca, I think, puts it. No, 'tis an excellent vessel, with an excellent captain, who will steer a certain course, who fears not the African blast nor the grisly Hyades nor the ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang

... him, forbade our banns with sepulchral barks. . . . It was our wedding-day, and at the critical moment the poodle leaped between us and swallowed the ring. . . . Or we were at the wedding-breakfast, and Bingo, a grisly black skeleton with flaming eyes, sat on the cake and would not allow Lilian to cut it. Even the rose-tree fancy was reproduced in a distorted form—the tree grew, and every blossom contained a miniature Bingo, which barked; and as I woke I was desperately trying ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various

... This last rib, when shut, flaps under the upper one, and also falls down with it before to the waist, but is not joined to the ribs below. Along the whole spine-bone runs a strong, flat, broad, grisly cartilage, to which are joined several other of these ribs; all which open horizontally, and are filled in the interstices with the above membrane, and are jointed to the ribs of the person just where the ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock

... the deep windings of the grove, no more The hag obscene and grisly phantom dwell; Nor in the fall of mountain-stream, or roar Of winds, is heard the angry spirit's yell; No wizard mutters the tremendous spell, Nor sinks convulsive in prophetic swoon; Nor bids the noise of drums and trumpets swell, To ease of fancied pangs the labouring moon, Or ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]

... since to me a blank has show'd. Still with fond search each well-known spot I pace Where once I saw her: Love, who grieves me so, My only guide, directs me where to go. I find her not: her every sainted trace Seeks, in bright realms above, her parent star From grisly ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... For see this lady he shall never mo'. And shortly to concluden all his woe, So much sorrow had never creature That is or shall be while the world may dure. His sleep, his meat, his drink is *him byraft*, *taken away from him* That lean he wex*, and dry as any shaft. *became His eyen hollow, grisly to behold, His hue sallow, and pale as ashes cold, And solitary he was, ever alone, And wailing all the night, making his moan. And if he hearde song or instrument, Then would he weepen, he might not be stent*. *stopped So feeble were his spirits, ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... that same grisly day, her father and herself had journeyed in a little old ramshackle vehicle, open to all the winds; passing, with the falling night, through dull villages, under ghostly trees, black-pearled with mist in drops. And ere long lanterns had to be lit, and she could perceive nothing else ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti

... du Pardon attained a grisly notoriety in the fourteenth century from the presence of the "fourches Patibulaires" or public place of execution upon the "Mont de la Justice" in one ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook

... Order and their comrades of St. Michael's Fort. The worn remnant of the garrison, all told, was scarcely six hundred strong, and hardly a man was without a wound. The Grand Master and his few surviving Knights looked like phantoms from another world, so pale and grisly were they, faint from their wounds, their hair and beard unkempt, their armour stained, and neglected, as men must look who had hardly slept without their weapons for more than three memorable months. As they ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole

... I went down to the works, which seemed to have grown smaller in my absence; but they were in full activity; and turning off to the new range of smithies I entered one where a great bald-headed man with a grisly beard was hammering away ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn

... the man curiously, but without seeming to perceive the rather grisly similitude between the latter's vagaries ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... upon the moody silence of their master, apprehensive probably of a small white truncheon which lay by Cedric's trencher, for the purpose of repelling the advances of his four-legged dependants. One grisly old wolf-dog alone, with the liberty of an indulged favourite, had planted himself close by the chair of state, and occasionally ventured to solicit notice by putting his large hairy head upon his master's ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... tying the knot of the rope more securely when he heard the bolt on the pantry door shoot back. He wheeled swiftly, to see Mary Bransford emerging from the pantry, her hands covering her face in a vain endeavor to shut from sight the grisly horror she had confronted when she had reached ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer

... the tongues were still mute. All night, as I now think, the wretches shivered and were silent. For indeed, I had no guess at the time at the nature and magnitude of the terrors I inflicted, or with what grisly images the notes of that old song had ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... majestic pace out of one chamber into the other. Four serving-men passed amongst them, bearing on their brawny shoulders on a stout litter of oak boughs the bloody carcass of a monstrous wild boar, with dim and faded eye, and with the foam yet lying white on his formidable tusks and grisly jaws. ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian

... fled, Hath left in shadows dread His burning idol all of blackest hue; In vain, with cymbal's ring, They call the grisly king, In dismal dance about the furnace blue; The brutish gods of Nile as fast— Isis and Orus, and ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman

... would crowd around the hearth, listening with breathless attention to some old crone of a negro, who was the oracle of the family, and who, perched like a raven in the corner of a chimney, would croak forth for a long winter afternoon a string of incredible stories about New England witches, grisly ghosts, horses without heads, and hair-breadth escapes and bloody ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... ignited by lightning in an autumn storm. That the devils might have music to their meat, others hastened to the pools, and poured molten metal amid the flames, so that the damned howled and cursed in grisly despair. If priests now could, instead of their cold and fruitless sermons about penitence, give a specimen upon earth of these horrid cries, sinners would quickly turn a deaf ear to the voluptuous warblings of castrati, and ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger

... a common belief in Scotland that the devil appeared as a black man. This appears in several witch trials and I think in Law's Memorials, that delightful storehouse of the quaint and grisly. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various

... a thing of which the mere memory made one shudder in the dark—the said picture representing a benevolent negro with Eva on his lap, from "Uncle Tom's Cabin," a blameless Sunday-school inspired story. The horrors of an early folio of Foxe's "Martyrs," of a grisly "Bunyan," with terrific pictures of Apollyon; even a still more grim series by H. C. Selous, issued by the Art Union, if memory may be trusted, were merely exciting; it was the mild and amiable representation ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White

... you put as much of that foam as would go on the point of a pin in an open cut, you would have an end that your worst enemy would shudder at. For this was the most horrifying of dangerous animals—a mad dog. Poor brute! As he came shambling down the road, he was the grisly ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips

... against the tower: but 'hit was so litille, as me thowght that it wold onnethe [scarcely] bere ony thing; and the first rong of the ladder was so that onnethe might my fynger reche therto, and that rong was sharper than ony rasor.' Hearing a 'grisly noyse' coming towards him, William 'markid' himself with a prayer, and the noise vanished, and he saw a rope let down over the ladder from the top of the tower. And when the woman had drawn him safely to the top, she told him that the cord was one that ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick

... Market-place produc't they me, To be a publique spectacle to all: Here, sayd they, is the Terror of the French, The Scar-Crow that affrights our Children so. Then broke I from the Officers that led me, And with my nayles digg'd stones out of the ground, To hurle at the beholders of my shame. My grisly countenance made others flye, None durst come neere, for feare of suddaine death. In Iron Walls they deem'd me not secure: So great feare of my Name 'mongst them were spread, That they suppos'd I could rend Barres ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... north Drives his iron chariot forth! His grisly hand in icy chains Fair Tweeda's silver ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell

... his mouth was grave. "I ought to have remembered that you can't scare a religious, be he or she Roman Catholic, Buddhist, or Mohammedan, by pointing to the King of Terrors. He does to frighten lay-folk, but for the others Death's grisly skeleton-hand holds ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... that instant. But nothing at all occurred. He dug about with the pole in the loose earth beyond the doorsill, then drew it back. The breeze was flowing freely past him; a few grains of soil blew over the sill and into the room. The door seemed to be concealing no grisly tricks and ...
— Gone Fishing • James H. Schmitz

... deliberation. Some wound up their worldly affairs with businesslike precision before embarking on their timeless voyage, others jumped into the black gulf without, apparently, any premeditated intention, as if at the beckoning summons of some grisly invisible hand which they dared not disobey. Barrant recalled the strange case of a wealthy merchant who had cut his throat on a Bank holiday and confessed before death that he had felt the same impulse on that day for years past. He ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees

... the weapons and patted the other with grisly affection. In the excess of my admiration I made bold to reach for it. He relinquished it to me with a mother's yearning. And all too legible in the polished butt of the thing were notches! Nine sinister notches I counted—not fresh notches, but emphatic, eloquent, chilling. I thrust ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... of Roger, never highly ameliorative, were none the more so now; the grisly wrestling with realities does little to promote the exudation of balm. Roger was tough and technical and litigious; his was the hand to seize, not ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller

... Scorrier was listening with a different motion of the hands—one rubbed them, one clenched them, another moved his closed fist, as if stabbing some one in the back. A grisly-bearded, beetle-browed, twinkling-eyed old Cornishman muttered: "A'hm not troublin' about that." It seemed almost as if Pippin's object was to get the men to kill him; they had gathered closer, crouching for a rush. Suddenly Pippin's voice dropped to a whisper: "I'm ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... my humble possible in my obscure capacity, Mrs. Grisly-Gosling," he replied. "I beg your pardon, Mrs. ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren

... was piled upon it, and then more sand must be dug, and gorse had to be cut to pile on that; and still from one end of the sordid mound a pair of feet projected and caught the light upon their patent-leather toes. But by this time the nerves of both were shaken; even Morris had enough of his grisly task; and they skulked off like animals into the thickest ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... friend, to tell of nights spent in the howlin' forest," he quavered, in the squeaky tone which invariably came to him when he was excited. "I'm not goin' to speak of myself. If you expect me to tell you how I trailed the jolly old leopard to his grisly lair an' fought with him single-handed, ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace

... on! fight on!" Tho' his vessel was all but a wreck; And it chanced that, when half of the short summer night was gone, With a grisly wound to be drest he had left the deck, But a bullet struck him that was dressing it suddenly dead, And himself he was wounded again in the side and the head, And he ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... their eyes towards each other and then flashed them away again. It is not good that one who has the eyes and the tongue of a man should take water from another—even from a Jerry Strann. And even Jerry Strann withdrew his eyes slowly from his prey, and shuddered; the sight of the most grisly death is ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand

... the general enemy. It is in the diseases always with us that the peril lies. Tuberculosis, carrying off ten per cent. of the entire nation, and making its worst ravages upon those in the prime of life, is a more terrible foe than was ever smallpox, or cholera, or yellow fever, or any of the grisly sounding bugaboos. Why, not so long ago, three highly civilized States went into quite a little frenzy over a poor dying wretch of a leper who had got loose; whereas every man that spits on the floor of a building wherein people live ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various

... place in the open space of the landing-grid, with vision cameras transmitting the sight over all the blueskin planet. Half-starved men with grisly blue blotches on their skins, marched him to the center of the largest level space on the planet which was not desperately being cultivated. Their hatred showed in their expressions. Bitterness and fury surrounded Calhoun like a wall. Most ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster

... but harder reading than Sordello itself. But the Revenger's Tragedy has merit as a piece of art and therewith a rare interest as a window on the artist's mind. The effect is as of a volcanic landscape. An earthquake has passed, and among grisly shapes and blasted aspects here lurks and wanders the genius ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley

... to get a promise from Agnes," he went on; "but when once given it is inviolate. This throws a grisly responsibility upon me. I must risk everything, if I am to do anything. You have expressed a dread which I have been endeavouring to stifle. I am ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes

... protected ourselves by wearing a piece of red woolen tape around the neck. Pepper and salt tied in a corner of the pocket was effective in warding off the evil eye. There were lucky signs, lucky dreams, spirits, and hobgoblins, a grisly collection, gathered by our wandering ancestors from the demonologies of ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin

... supplied. Then, at last, the ship ran ashore at the foot of a great castle; and it was midnight. Sir Launcelot waited not for the dawn, but, his sword gripped in his hand, sprang ashore, and then, right before him, he saw a postern where the gate stood open indeed, but two grisly lions kept the way. And when Sir Launcelot would have rushed upon the great beasts with his sword, it was struck from his hand, and a voice said: "Ah! Launcelot, ever is thy trust in thy might rather ...
— Stories from Le Morte D'Arthur and the Mabinogion • Beatrice Clay

... Brenton faltered at the grisly word, not so much in mercy to the father, seated there before him, as because the old-time love for that father's son seemed to rise up and catch him by the throat and ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... the darkness, straining his ears the while to try and convince himself that the faint sound he heard was not a movement made by a prowling wolf scenting them out; and as he lay listening, he pictured to himself the gaunt, grisly beast creeping up to ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn

... weather-beaten; a deep scar, as if from the slash of a cutlass, had almost divided his nose, and made a gash in his upper lip, through which his teeth shone like a bulldog's. A mop of iron-gray hair gave a grisly finish to this hard-favored visage. His dress was of an amphibious character. He wore an old hat edged with tarnished lace, and cocked in martial style on one side of his head; a rusty[1] blue military coat with brass buttons; and a wide pair of ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne

... solemn day At Pluto's hall his court to pay; The phantom having humbly kiss'd His grisly monarch's sooty fist, Presented him the weekly bills Of doctors, fevers, plagues, and pills. Pluto, observing since the peace The burial article decrease, And vex'd to see affairs miscarry, Declared in council ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... wretch might shriek, Well might her paleness terror speak! For there were seen, in that dark wall, Two niches, narrow, deep, and tall; Who enters at such grisly door Shall ne'er, I ween, find exit more. In each a slender meal was laid, Of roots, of water, and of bread: By each, in Benedictine dress, Two haggard monks stood motionless; Who, holding high a blazing torch, ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott

... at Ceperano,[4] where every Apullan was false, and there by Tagliacozzo,[5] where without arms the old Alardo conquered,—and one should show his limb pierced through, and one his lopped off, it would be nothing to equal the grisly mode of ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri

... Moloch, fled, Hath left in shadows dread His burning idol all of blackest hue; In vain with cymbals' ring They call the grisly king, In dismal dance about the furnace blue; The brutish gods of Nile as fast, Isis, and Orus, and ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various

... raise you hosts, Of ghosts, And that without reflectors; And creepy things With wings, And gaunt and grisly spectres! He can fill you crowds Of shrouds, And horrify you vastly; He can rack your brains With chains, And gibberings grim and ghastly. Then, if you plan it, he Changes organity With an urbanity, Full of Satanity, Vexes humanity ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert

... the gun, and then seizing one end of the pole, we marched triumphantly back with our grisly trophy, accompanied by quite a cloud of flies which kept ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn

... barbed head of which was dyed the same reddish yellow as the blood still seeping from the torn body. Swinging the weapon so close to Raf that the Terran was forced to retreat a step or two to escape contact with the grisly relic, the officer burst into an impassioned speech. Then he went back to the gestures which were easier ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton



Words linked to "Grisly" :   alarming, sick, ghastly, grim



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