Is grossingly a word? If not what's the closest alternative? Example sentence:
The grumpy man stared at the couple, who were being grossingly sweet to each other.
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Sign up to join this communityIs grossingly a word? If not what's the closest alternative? Example sentence:
The grumpy man stared at the couple, who were being grossingly sweet to each other.
I’ve never encountered any references that suggest that grossingly can be viewed as a legitimate construction. In every similar context to your proposed use that I’ve seen, either sickeningly or disgustingly has been used.
I’m guessing that you derived your example from the phrase gross out, which is slang for disgust (as used as a verb), with some intensification that normally can’t easily be expressed.
The correct term is grossly.
In a disgusting or coarse manner; vulgarly.
‘do you have one cookie, or grossly eat the whole package?’
-- Oxford Dictionaries
However, this word is not often used in this sense (or at least I haven't heard it being used like this very often), so I would choose disgustingly or something similar.
Let's look at disgustingly:
Disgust - a word that means "to make sick, typically through senses." You might say This disgusts me.
Disgusting - while it's possible to say something like Disgusting me terribly, I left the trash dump, this particular "-ing" word is common to use as a modifier or copular subject complement. The disgusting trash dump was abhorrent, I found her hair disgusting.
You can typically add -ly to words that modify nouns to turn them into words that modify verbs. Hence, disgustingly: That cat disgustingly ate the roadkill in the street.
Now, let's take gross:
Gross has two meanings. One is "to have a profit of X after doing something, especially working a job for a time" - I grossed 20,000 dollars last year.
The other meaning is to be disgusting. This is gross.
Gross as a verb does NOT mean to be disgusting - there is the phrasal variation gross out that does work that way though. This grosses me out.
Because gross (meaning disgusting) isn't really a verb, deriving a gerund/participle from it doesn't work too well. Grossing me terribly, I left the trash drump (fails) - but Grossing me out terribly, I left the trash dump (does mostly work).
Grossing would not be one of those -ing words that works to modify a noun. I tried to avoid the grossing trash heap (sounds like the "profit" meaning of gross is trying to be intended and that the trash heap is becoming bigger).
You can't use gross out in this way either. I tried to avoid the grossing out trash heap (sounds like you are trying to say "I tried to avoid grossing out the trash heap").
Thus grossingly doesn't technically work.
However ...
At least the region and time I grew up in within the US, the idea of things being called gross is something children that are not yet teenagers do. Especially with respect to young boys and their stereotypical thoughts of young girls (cooties and all that). "Boys think kissing girls is 'gross'" type of thing.
So grossingly could invoke that type of thought in respect to someone else's PDA, and if that's what the writer is trying to convey, it's a well-chosen "intentional twist" of the language.
But don't try using that term unless you are a professional writer or trying to convey that type of thought/impression/mood, etc.
In the specific context, you could use "cloyingly"
Cloying
adjective
disgusting or distasteful by reason of excess cloying sweetness;
also : excessively sweet or sentimental. e.g. a cloying romantic comedy
— cloyingly adverb