Grotesque
The word grotesque comes from the same Latin root as "Grotto", which originated from Greek krypte "hidden place", meaning a small cave or hollow. The original meaning was restricted to an extravagant style of Ancient Roman decorative art rediscovered and then copied in Rome at the end of the 15th century. The "caves" were in fact rooms and corridors of the Domus Aurea, the unfinished palace complex started by Nero after the Great Fire of Rome in AD 64, which had become overgrown and buried, until they were broken into again, mostly from above. Spreading from Italian to the other European languages, the term was long used largely interchangeably with arabesque and moresque for types of decorative patterns using curving foliage elements.
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Famous quotes containing the word grotesque:
“The moose is singularly grotesque and awkward to look at. Why should it stand so high at the shoulders? Why have so long a head? Why have no tail to speak of?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
““The city’s grotesque iron skeletons
Would knock their drunken penthouse heads together
And cake their concrete dirt off in the streets.””
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“I envy people who can just look at a sunset. I wonder how you can shoot it. There is nothing more grotesque to me than a vacation.”
—Dustin Hoffman (b. 1937)