gnarly

adjective

ˈnär-lē 

gnarlier; gnarliest

1

: gnarled

gnarly branches

2

slang : very bad: such as

a

: very difficult or challenging to deal with

a gnarly [=thorny, knotty] problem

gnarly conditions

Having … skidded around gnarly hairpin turns … , the two bikers pedaled furiously for the finish.

—Austin Murphy

b

: nasty, unpleasant

"This guy has some pretty gnarly karma coming …"

—Drew Barrymore

c

: arousing disgust or distaste : gross

A cute toe polish can't save gnarly, callused soles.

—Jessica R. White

" … It'll be kind of a gruesome death. You know, its fur will start falling out, it'll develop gnarly sores all over its body. … "

—David Randall

3

slang : cool, excellent

After initially wiping out on the left wave, [Filipe] Toledo responded with a gnarly air reverse on the right and was rewarded with a 9.27.

—Hanford Sentinel

especially : having a pleasingly or impressively rugged or rough quality

He played in the NFL, but then got bored with football and became a FBI agent. He was a gnarly dude.

—Reece Kelley Graham

And yet [Mark] Knopfler built a reputation as an intensely creative virtuoso (not to mention an ace songwriter), showing remarkable command over a range of tones and textures—from the gnarly distortion on hit single "Money for Nothing" to the stinging precision of "Tunnel of Love."

—Rolling Stone

Examples of gnarly in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Big Sky, Montana This year is shaping up to be a banner one for Big Sky, a 5,850-acre resort (America’s second largest behind Park City) awash with steeps, trees, bumps, and a gnarly triple black diamond run called Big Couloir, which drops more than 1,400 feet with a sustained pitch of 50 degrees. —Amy Tara Koch, Robb Report, 29 Jan. 2026

There's a scene in Send Help, director Sam Raimi's survival horror-thriller and borderline comedy, in which Dylan O'Brien's Bradley Preston eats a gnarly bug. —Nick Romano, Entertainment Weekly, 29 Jan. 2026

But in a 2023 paper, a team of physicists, including the great theoretician Edward Witten, added an observer with a quantum clock to their treatment of a black hole and were surprised to find the gnarly math became simpler. —Joseph Howlett, Scientific American, 27 Jan. 2026

Boston traffic was too gnarly on Wednesday, so the bus turned around. —Bennett Durando, Denver Post, 9 Jan. 2026

Word History

Etymology

see gnarled

First Known Use

1760, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Rhymes for gnarly

• barley
• charley
• charlie
• marly
• bizarrely