macabre

*****************************************************************
Discover the people and events that made history ON THIS DAY. 
Sign up for the free daily newsletter from Britannica.
http://register.britannica.com/mailinglist
*****************************************************************

The Word of the Day for October 24 is:

macabre   \muh-KAHB\   adjective
     1 : having death as a subject : comprising or including a 
personalized representation of death
    *2 : dwelling on the gruesome
     3 : tending to produce horror in a beholder

Example sentence:
     The Halloween movie was a grisly and macabre tale filled 
with gruesome special effects and terrifying monsters.

Did you know?
     During the 13th and 14th centuries, when everyday life was 
marked by horrific events such as the Black Plague and the 
Hundred Years' War, Europeans introduced the danse macabre to 
demonstrate the inevitability and impartiality of death. The 
danse macabre was a dance or parade in which a skeleton 
representing death led other skeletons or living persons to the 
grave, and its name recalls the Maccabees, 2nd-century Jewish 
patriots who were associated with death and purgatory. Middle 
French speakers called this pageant "danse de Macabre," 
literally "dance of death," and it was from the French name that 
English speakers borrowed "macabre" as a term for things hideous 
or deathly.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.