The redoubtable Sherlock Holmes shows his amazing perspicacity even in such matters as the connotation of words. While Dr. Watson echoes the common interpretation of grotesque as "strange-remarkable," Holmes insists that there "is surely something more than that ... some underlying suggestion of the tragic and the terrible." In adjectival uses grotesque usually follows Dr. Watson's explication. The present study elaborates on Holmes' premonition, and is primarily interested in the English phrase the grotesque as a concept and a literary genre. It is a term particularly appropriate to a modern mode of fiction, as exemplified in the tales of the Flemish writer Paul van Ostaijen (1896–1928). Current usage retains the popular connotations of several centuries: grotesque is a synonym for "strange," "bizarre," for anything distorted or not normal. Such vague usage has made it rather difficult to formulate a precise definition of the grotesque as a literary genre and obscured the original association of carefully contrived unnaturalness, and of the exploration of the darker aspects of fantasy and the imagination.