ugly
Forms
- Comparative
- uglier
- Superlative
- ugliest
- Plural
- uglies
Definitions
1.Displeasing to the eye; aesthetically unpleasing.
- O, I have passed a miserable night, / So full of ugly sights, of ghastly dreams.
- In Athens he looked up from his ouzo at what he called the ugliest people in the world.
2.Displeasing to the ear or some other sense.
3.Offensive to one's sensibilities or morality.
- He played an ugly trick on us.
4.Ill-natured; crossgrained; quarrelsome.
1.Ugliness.(slang)
- I want your ugly / I want your disease.
2.Any product whose size and shape prevents it from fitting neatly on a pallet.(informal)
- Non-standard products (abnormal or 'uglies'): many distribution operations are designed to cater for standard palletized products.
3.An ugly person or thing.(slang)
Frequency
Overall
Uncommon· #3019
By learning goal
- Everyday conversation
- Rare
- General reading & writing
- Uncommon
- Academic
- Rare
- Literature
- Rare
Related words
Antonyms
Etymology
Inherited from Middle English ugly, uggely, uglike, borrowed from Old Norse uggligr (“fearful, dreadful, horrible in appearance”), from uggr (“fear, apprehension, dread”) (possibly related to agg (“strife, hate”)), equivalent to ug + -ly. Cognate with Scots ugly, uglie, Icelandic ugglegur. Meaning softened to "very unpleasant to look at" around the late 14th century, and sense of "morally offensive" attested from around 1300.