concise and full of meaning; "welcomed her pithy comments"; "the peculiarly sardonic and sententious style in which Don Luis composed his epigrams"- Hervey Allen
shockingly repellent; inspiring horror; "ghastly wounds"; "the grim aftermath of the bombing"; "the grim task of burying the victims"; "a grisly murder"; "gruesome evidence of human sacrifice"; "macabre tales of war and plague in the Middle ages"; "macabre tortures conceived by madmen"
excessively conventional and unimaginative and hence dull; "why is the middle class so stodgy, so utterly without a sense of humor?"; "a stodgy dinner party"
heavy and starchy and hard to digest; "stodgy food"; "a stodgy pudding served up when everyone was already full"