Word of the Day:

"At the heart of Mary Shelley's 1818 classic Frankenstein and its many pop culture adaptations is the scene in the mad scientist’s lab where Victor Frankenstein, helped by a bolt of lightning, animates the grotesque figure made out of human and animal parts lying on his anatomy table." — Candida Rifkind, The Winnipeg Free Press, 30 May 2026

More example sentences

During the Italian Renaissance, Romans of culture took a great interest in their country's past and began excavating ancient buildings. During their excavations, they uncovered chambers (known in Italian as grotte, "caves," in reference to their cavelike appearance) decorated with fantastical paintings. The Italian word grottesca became the name for a later but similar type of painting or sculpture depicting fantastic combinations of human and animal forms interwoven with unusual fruits and flowers, and by 1561 it had passed through Middle French into the English noun grotesque. The adjective form of grotesque was first used in the early 17th century to describe the decorative art but is now used to describe anything bizarre, incongruous, or unusual.