adjective
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horrific or bloodthirsty
a gory story
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involving bloodshed and killing
a gory battle
-
covered in gore
Other Word Forms
- gorily adverb
- goriness noun
Etymology
Origin of gory
Explanation
Use the word gory to describe something that features a lot of bloodshed and violence, like a horror movie in which victims are axed to death by a madman. Some people love gory movies like that, and others refuse to watch them. Something that is gory often involves both violence and bloodshed, but it can also describe something that is merely blood, like the gory photographs depicting a root canal procedure in a dental assistant textbook. Gory can describe unpleasant, embarrassing things, like saying of your brother’s bad behavior over the holidays, “I’ll spare you the gory details about his meltdown at the family Christmas party.”
Vocabulary lists containing gory
Bud, Not Buddy
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"Macbeth" Vocabulary from Act III
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The Catcher in the Rye
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Her new single might be called “Spooky Action” but despite a few gory moments, there’s not much spooky action to be found in the film as a whole.
From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 17, 2026
It’s hard to find a more influential game than this gory, controversial game from Id Software.
From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 9, 2026
And while we’ve never really had the full gory details and what that’s entailed, it’s obviously been a subject of informed speculation.
From Slate • Feb. 4, 2026
Season 1 was surprisingly great — a gory but smart, richly developed retro-futuristic reflection of class conflict — and wound up being one of Prime Video’s most-watched shows ever.
From MarketWatch • Nov. 30, 2025
Irene Reilly’s relatives always had gory biographies that were worth hearing.
From "A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
