These words refer to what is repellently ugly or extremely distasteful. Gruesome may be used as a hyperbole for anything evoking such a response: a woman dressed in simply gruesome taste. More precisely the word refers to spectacles of physical violence, or an unhealthy interest in such things: the gruesome atrocities committed by both sides in the tribal wars; gruesome murders that suggested a psychopathic killer; the gruesome delight with which some newspapers played up the tragedy. Grisly is very close to gruesome , but is more intense in suggesting destructive violence that springs from a brutally sadistic or abnormal mind. It would, thus, apply less to impersonal destruction on a mass scale, such as might result in war: grisly indications that he had played cat and with which unspeakable experiments were performed on human subjects; a grisly interest in descriptions of deviant sexual behaviour. The word can have comic force in referring to excessively laboured or vivid accounts of a clandestine nature: eager to tell everyone the grisly details of her neighbour’s divorce.

Hideous , ghastly and grim are much less specific than the previous pair. Each is popularly used as a hyperbole. Hideous often has reference to extreme deformation or ugliness and ghastly to something frightening or filled with horror: a car accident that left hideous scars on his face: the ghastly realization that she had lost her way in the forest. Ghastly has a more specific reference to a ghostlike or deathlike pallor, or one resulting form fear: a ghastly face that spoke of the harrowing experience she had suffered. Grim suggests something stern or forbidding, even to the point of being terrifying: the grim aftermath of the abortive rebellion.

Lurid , like ghastly , may suggest an extremely pale appearance: a face lurid with fear and shock. Paradoxically, the word also suggests redness such as produced by a smoky fire: the lurid torches of the enraged townsmen gathering in the courtyard. More generally, the word refers to anything hideous in its vividness: the lurid marks of the whip across his back. The word has special use to refer to gruesome or sensational verbal descriptions or pictorial treatment: lurid accounts of the carnage left by the two-day battle; lurid photographs of the plane crash. Macabre refers specifically to horror-inspiring ideas or spectacles of any kind, without necessarily pointing to physical destruction of any sort: the macabre sexual exploits attributed to witches. Macabre is derived etymologically from danse macabre , dance of death, and suggests a gruesome and frequently bizarre interest in or connection with death: macabre tales of blood-sucking vampires, zombies and other supernatural phenomena; the routine but nonetheless macabre preparation of a condemned prisoner for electrocution.