dire vs grim

dire

adj
  • Expressing bad consequences: dreadful; dismal. 

  • Warning of bad consequences: ill-boding; portentous. 

  • Bad in quality, awful, terrible. 

  • Requiring action to prevent bad consequences: urgent, pressing. 

grim

adj
  • Ghastly or sinister. 

  • Rigid and unrelenting. 

  • Disgusting; gross. 

  • Dismal and gloomy, cold and forbidding. 

verb
  • To make grim; to give a stern or forbidding aspect to. 

How often have the words dire and grim occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )