What is grim?

Famous quotes containing the word grim:

    —But he, grim grinning King,
    Who caitiffs scorns, and doth the blest surprise,
    Late having deck’d with beauty’s rose his tomb,
    Disdains to crop a weed, and will not come.
    William Drummond, of Hawthornden (1585–1649)

    A youth in apparel that glittered
    Went to walk in a grim forest.
    There he met an assassin
    Stephen Crane (1871–1900)

    We have need to be as sturdy pioneers still as Miles Standish, or Church, or Lovewell. We are to follow on another trail, it is true, but one as convenient for ambushes. What if the Indians are exterminated, are not savages as grim prowling about the clearings today?
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)