grim

Modifying Another Word

• relentlessly: Unlike Up on the Roof, however, the story told is relentlessly grim.
• pretty: Overall the audit of Britain's language skills is pretty grim.
• rather: M off to work; I have a rather grim morning, or at least a tiring one.
• fairly: Samsun, the next major town heading East is, by all accounts, fairly grim.
• somewhat: The picture I have painted today may have seemed somewhat grim.
• equally: Let us consider some other statistics that make equally grim reading.

Adjective complement with noun phrase

• look: Even places that looked new and shiny when I first saw them are now looking a bit grim after a quarter century of neglect.
• sound: All this sounds a bit grim, so to lighten the mood the main story is interspersed with other shorter stories.

Modifies a noun

• reaper: My smile is your grim reaper, my eyes are your hell.
• reminder: A: The ashes are a grim reminder of our bodily mortality.
• reality: Outside, in the still African night, we faced the grim reality of water supply in the desert.
• determination: With a grim yet somewhat optimistic determination, DD piloted the car through the narrow lanes west of Bury.
• irony: They'd had better success at dying than he'd ever had, he thought with grim irony.
• smile: Still, he thought with a grim smile, he had all eternity to do it.

Used with adjective complement

• look: Picking up where we left off in May, things are looking grim for the good guys.
• seem: The picture I have painted today may have seemed somewhat grim.
• remain: Regardless of these visits, the situation in Tibet still remains grim.
• sound: Classical music requires a high degree of precision and skill before it rises above sounding grim.
• feel: Anyway, the worst is now over, and I just feel grim.
• become: This is when the journey must have become rather grim for the cats.