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whimsical; extravagant; of irregular forms and proportions; fantastic; ludicrous; antic. "Grotesque design." Dryden. "Grotesque incidents." Macaulay.

In a grotesque manner.

Quality of being grotesque.

Grotesque action, speech, or manners; grotesque doings. "The sustained grotesquery of Feather-top." K. L. Bates.

Odd; fantastic; fanciful; grotesque; ludicrous. The antic postures of a merry-andrew. Addison. The Saxons . . . worshiped many idols, barbarous in name, some monstrous, all antic for shape. Fuller.

Oddly; grotesquely.

A secondary mask, or grotesque interlude, between the parts of a serious mask. [Written also anue.] Bacon.

A representation of a grotesque scene from common or rustic life.

In bad taste; grotesque; odd.

Odd in manner or appearance; fantastic; whimsical; extravagant; grotesque. C. Kingsley.

A grotesque blunder in language; an apparent congruity, but real incongruity, of ideas, contained in a form of expression; so called, perhaps, from the apparent incongruity between the dictatorial nature of the pope's bulls and his professions of humility. And whereas the papist boasts himself to be a Roman Catholic, i…

Ludicrous representation; exaggerated parody; grotesque satire. Burlesque is therefore of two kinds; the first represents mean persons in the accouterments of heroes, the other describes great persons acting and speaking like the basest among the people. Addison.

French literature will be the one that has most of the look of a caricature. I. Taylor. A grotesque caricature of virtue. Macaulay.

a cabinet, a house, or a garden. In the midst was placed a large compartment composed of grotesque work. Carew.

Resembling fantasies in irregularity, caprice, or eccentricity; irregular; oddly shaped; grotesque. There at the foot of yonder nodding beech, That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high. T. Gray.

d, and abounding with ludicrous incidents and expressions. Farce is that in poetry which "grotesque" is in a picture: the persons and action of a farce are all unnatural, and the manners false. Dryden.

A spout projecting from the roof gutter of a building, often carved grotesquely. [Written also gargle, gargyle, and gurgoyle.]

A grotesque effigy, like that of Guy Fawkes, dressed up in England on the fifth of November, the day of the Gunpowder Plot. The lady . . . who dresses like a guy. W. S. Gilbert.

lady of the May games; one of the characters in a morris dance; a May queen. Afterward, a grotesque character personated in sports and buffoonery by a man in woman's clothes.

A grotesque misuse of a word; a word so used.