grim [OE] The meaning of grim has weakened over the centuries from its first appearance in Old English as ‘fierce or cruel’. To hang (or cling) on like grim death dates from the early 19th century, but the use of grim for the forbidding appearance of the figure of Death is recorded much earlier. The Grim Reaper [M19th] is a representation of Death in the form of a cloaked skeleton wielding a long scythe.