Word of the Day: MACABRE

¡Feliz Día de los Muertos!

macabre (adj) - representing, personifying, or obsessed with death, often in a strange or unpleasant way; gruesome or ghastly [muh-kah-bruh, -kahb]

BACKGROUND: The word macabre appears to come most directly from the Middle French phrase Danse Macabré, meaning the Dance of Death. The dance itself served as a reflection, reminder, and even celebration of the universality of death. The name of the dance may be a corruption of Dance of the Maccabees, a grim allusion to the slaughter of Jewish rebels.

“The appeal of the spectrally macabre is generally narrow because it demands from the reader a certain degree of imagination and a capacity for detachment from everyday life.” —H. P. Lovecraft

[Our Wednesday Wildcards are fascinating and important words that are not derived from classical roots.]