ghastly

While adamantly miserabilist, it does have a plot or at least one shocking plot point that’s so ghastly it made me giddy.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 19, 2026

Messrs. Hanke and Walker write that the fiscal picture is far worse even than it appears on the ghastly federal balance sheet:

From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 26, 2026

David Wall, who has lived on the street for 44 years, said the piles of dumped black bags had contained dirty nappies, food waste and even a dead rat which caused a ghastly smell.

From BBC ● Mar. 6, 2026

Meanwhile, the sumptuous imagery and amiable pacing of “Wuthering Heights” trounce del Toro’s ghastly slog of a film.

From Salon ● Feb. 23, 2026

She was ghastly, chalkily pale; the red seemed to have gone even from her lips and gums, and the bones of her face stood out prominently; her breathing was painful to see or hear.

From "Dracula" by Bram Stoker

Not least because, given various developing news stories relating to our hosts, the tournament has rather ghastlier noises-off than usual.

From The Guardian ● Jun. 11, 2018

Now investigators believe that both versions have a piece of the even ghastlier truth.

From Time Magazine Archive

Sigmund Freud himself could not have contrived a ghastlier childhood for a poet.

From Time Magazine Archive

It was noted, however, by some who chanced to meet him upon the street and glanced curiously at him, that he was ghastlier than ever, with sunken cheeks and dull eyes.

From The Lash by Olin L. Lyman

To grow is sad, since evils grow no less;       Great height is mark for all: The more I have of branches, more of clustering boughs,       The ghastlier shadows fall.

From Poems by Victor Hugo

There’s a darkly funny early shot of Rudolf riding a horse from his yard up to the gates of Auschwitz, completing the world’s shortest, ghastliest commute.

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 14, 2023

Historian Timothy Snyder has defined Ukraine and its Eastern European vicinity as the Bloodlands, the most violent frontier of the ghastliest era in human history.

From Washington Post ● Dec. 23, 2022

They made it to the Super Bowl in 2014, only to have the ghastliest ending in football history against the Patriots.

From Seattle Times ● Jan. 9, 2021

It was that ghastliest of hours — 3 a.m. — bedtime a distant memory and daylight an eternity away.

From New York Times ● Oct. 30, 2020

Mrs. Mallet was a brunette who might once have considered herself a beauty, to judge by the self-conscious and self-satisfied simper which the ghastliest recollections were unable to banish.

From Cecilia de Noël by Lanoe Falconer