macabre

adj
/ˌməˈkɑː.bɹə/UK/məˈkɑb/US

Etymology

Borrowed from French macabre, whose etymology is uncertain. Possibly from the term danse macabre, most commonly believed to be from corruption of the biblical name Maccabees; compare Latin Chorea Machabaeorum. Another theory derives the French term (through Spanish macabro) from Arabic مَقَابِر (maqābir, “cemeteries”), plural of مَقْبَرَة (maqbara) or مَقْبُرَة (maqbura).

  1. derived from مَقَابِر
  2. derived from macabro
  3. borrowed from macabre

Definitions

  1. Representing or personifying death.

  2. Obsessed with death or the gruesome.

    • Indeed, in the 1854 draft of Tristan he planned to have Parzival visit the dying knight, and both operas display the same macabre obsession with bloody gore and festering wounds.
  3. Ghastly, shocking, terrifying.

    • The appeal of the spectrally macabre is generally narrow because it demands from the reader a certain degree of imagination and a capacity for detachment from every-day life.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for macabre. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA