grievous

• POS: Adjective
• HYPHEN: griev=ous

CIDE DICTIONARY

grievous, a. [OF. grevous, grevos, LL. gravosus. See Grief.].

•  Causing grief or sorrow; painful; afflictive; hard to bear; offensive; harmful.  [1913 Webster]

  "The famine was grievous in the land."  [1913 Webster]

  "The thing was very grievous in Abraham's sight."  [1913 Webster]
•  Characterized by great atrocity; heinous; aggravated; flagitious; as, a grievous sin.  Gen. xviii. 20.  [1913 Webster]
•  Full of, or expressing, grief; showing great sorrow or affliction; as, a grievous cry.  [1913 Webster]

OXFORD DICTIONARY

grievous, adj.
1 (of pain etc.) severe.
2 causing grief or suffering.
3 injurious.
4 flagrant, heinous.

Idiom

grievous bodily harm Law serious injury inflicted intentionally on a person.

Derivative

grievously adv. grievousness n.

Etymology

ME f. OF grevos (as GRIEVE(1))

THESAURUS

grievous

abominable, acute, affecting, afflictive, aggrieved, anguished, appalling, arrant, atrocious, awful, base, beastly, beneath contempt, bitter, black, blameworthy, bleak, brutal, burdensome, calamitous, careworn, cataclysmal, cataclysmic, catastrophic, cheerless, comfortless, contemptible, damaging, dangerous, demanding, deplorable, depressing, depressive, despicable, destructive, detestable, dire, disastrous, discomforting, disgusting, dismal, dismaying, distasteful, distressful, distressing, doleful, dolorific, dolorogenic, dolorous, dreadful, dreary, dumb with grief, egregious, enormous, exacting, exigent, fatal, fell, fetid, filthy, flagrant, foul, fulsome, galling, grave, grief-stricken, griefful, grieved, gross, harmful, hateful, heartbreaking, heartrending, heavy, heinous, horrible, horrid, hurtful, in grief, infamous, intolerable, joyless, lamentable, loathsome, lousy, lugubrious, major, monstrous, mournful, moving, nasty, nefarious, noisome, notorious, obnoxious, odious, offensive, oppressive, outrageous, painful, pathetic, piteous, pitiable, pitiful, plaintive, plangent, plunged in grief, poignant, rank, regrettable, reprehensible, repulsive, rotten, rueful, ruinous, sad, saddening, scandalous, schlock, scurvy, serious, severe, shabby, shameful, sharp, shocking, shoddy, sordid, sore, sorrowed, sorrowful, sorrowing, squalid, superincumbent, taxing, tearful, terrible, too bad, touching, tough, tragic, ugly, unbearable, unclean, uncomfortable, unfortunate, unpalatable, vile, villainous, weighty, woebegone, woeful, worst, worthless, wounding, wreckful, wretched

ROGET THESAURUS

grievous

Badness

N badness, hurtfulness, virulence, evil doer, bane, plague spot, evil star, ill wind, hoodoo, Jonah, snake in the grass, skeleton in the closet, amari aliquid, thorn in the side, malignity, malevolence, tender mercies, ill-treatment, annoyance, molestation, abuse, oppression, persecution, outrage, misusage, injury, knockout drops, badness, peccancy, abomination, painfulness, pestilence, guilt, depravity, hurtful, harmful, scathful, baneful, baleful, injurious, deleterious, detrimental, noxious, pernicious, mischievous, full of mischief, mischief-making, malefic, malignant, nocuous, noisome, prejudicial, disserviceable, disadvantageous, wide-wasting, unlucky, sinister, obnoxious, untoward, disastrous, oppressive, burdensome, onerous, malign, corrupting &c (corrupt), virulent, venomous, envenomed, corrosive, poisonous, deadly, destructive, inauspicious, bad, ill, arrant, as bad as bad can be, dreadful, horrid, horrible, dire, rank, peccant, foul, fulsome, rotten, rotten at the core, vile, base, villainous, mean, injured, deteriorated, unsatisfactory, exceptionable indifferent, below par, illcontrived, ill-conditioned, wretched, sad, grievous, deplorable, lamentable, pitiful, pitiable, woeful, evil, wrong, depraved, shocking, reprehensible, hateful, hateful as a toad, abominable, detestable, execrable, cursed, accursed, confounded, damned, damnable, infernal, diabolic, unadvisable, unprofitable, incompetent, irremediable, badly, wrong, ill, to one's cost, where the shoe pinches, bad is the best: the worst come to the worst, herba mala presto cresco, wrongs unredressed or insults unavenged.

Painfulness

N painfulness, trouble, care, trial, affliction, infliction, blow, stroke, burden, load, curse, bitter pill, bitter draught, waters of bitterness, annoyance, grievance, nuisance, vexation, mortification, sickener, bore, bother, pother, hot water, sea of troubles, hornet's nest, plague, pest, cancer, ulcer, sting, thorn, canker, scorpion, dagger, scourge, carking care, canker worm of care, mishap, misfortune, desagrement, esclandre, rub, source of irritation, source of annoyance, wound, open sore, sore subject, skeleton in the closet, thorn in the flesh, thorn in one's side, where the shoe pinches, gall and wormwood, sorry sight, heavy news, provocation, affront, head and front of one's offending, infestation, molestation, malignity, causing pain, hurting, hurtful, painful, dolorific, dolorous, unpleasant, unpleasing, displeasing, disagreeable, unpalatable, bitter, distasteful, uninviting, unwelcome, undesirable, undesired, obnoxious, unacceptable, unpopular, thankless, unsatisfactory, untoward, unlucky, uncomfortable, distressing, afflicting, afflictive, joyless, cheerless, comfortless, dismal, disheartening, depressing, depressive, dreary, melancholy, grievous, piteous, woeful, rueful, mournful, deplorable, pitiable, lamentable, sad, affecting, touching, pathetic, irritating, provoking, stinging, annoying, aggravating, mortifying, galling, unaccommodating, invidious, vexatious, troublesome, tiresome, irksome, wearisome, plaguing, plaguy, awkward, importunate, teasing, pestering, bothering, harassing, worrying, tormenting, carking, intolerable, insufferable, insupportable, unbearable, unendurable, past bearing, not to be borne, not to be endured, more than flesh and blood can bear, enough to drive one mad, enough to provoke a saint, enough to make a parson swear, enough to gag a maggot, shocking, terrific, grim, appalling, crushing, dreadful, fearful, frightful, thrilling, tremendous, dire, heart-breaking, heart-rending, heart-wounding, heart-corroding, heart-sickening, harrowing, rending, odious, hateful, execrable, repulsive, repellent, abhorrent, horrid, horrible, horrific, horrifying, offensive, nauseous, nauseating, disgusting, sickening, revolting, nasty, loathsome, loathful, fulsome, vile, hideous, sharp, acute, sore, severe, grave, hard, harsh, cruel, biting, caustic, cutting, corroding, consuming, racking, excruciating, searching, grinding, grating, agonizing, envenomed, catheretic, pyrotic, ruinous, disastrous, calamitous, tragical, desolating, withering, burdensome, onerous, oppressive, cumbrous, cumbersome, painfully, with pain, deuced, Int, hinc illae lachrymae!, surgit amari aliquid, the place being too hot to hold one, the iron entering into the soul, he jests at scars that never felt a wound, I must be cruel only to be kind, what deep wounds ever closed without a scar?.