ugly
Part of speech: adj
noun
Morphological type: derivation
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.
For the meaning development compare Bulgarian грозен (grozen) (< Proto-Slavic *grozьnъ), Russian стра́шный (strášnyj) (< Proto-Slavic *strašьnъ < *straxъ); Latin foedus (< Proto-Indo-European *bʰeyh₂-).
Base: ug
Affixes: -ly
Inflected forms:
form: uglier
pos: adj
tags: comparative
form: ugliest
pos: adj
tags: superlative
form: ougly
pos: adj
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: uglies
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: ougly
pos: noun
tags: alternative
obsolete
Senses:
gloss: Displeasing to the eye; aesthetically unpleasing.
pos: adj
examples: the ugly view of his deformed crimes
O, I have passed a miserable night, / So full of ugly sights, of ghastly dreams.
When the poor man’s integuments, no longer nourished from within, become dead skin, mere adscititious leather and callosity, wearing thicker and thicker, uglier and uglier;[…]— yes then, you may say, his usefulness once more is quite obstructed;[…]it is time that he take to bed, and prepare for departure, which cannot now be distant!
In Athens he looked up from his ouzo at what he called the ugliest people in the world.
President Obama gave an important press conference today and even took questions from the press, but all of this was overshadowed by the fact that Obama debuted one of the ugliest suits in the history of this great nation.
gloss: Displeasing to the ear or some other sense.
pos: adj
gloss: Offensive to one's sensibilities or morality.
pos: adj
examples: He played an ugly trick on us.
All this was extraordinarily distasteful to Churchill. It was ugly, gross. Never before had he felt such repulsion when the vicar displayed his characteristic bluntness or coarseness of speech. In the present connexion—or rather as a transition from the subject that started their conversation—such talk had been distressingly out of place.
gloss: Ill-natured; crossgrained; quarrelsome.
pos: adj
tags: Southern-US
examples: an ugly temper; to feel ugly
gloss: Unpleasant; disagreeable; likely to cause trouble or loss.
pos: adj
tags: derogatory
figuratively
examples: an ugly rumour; an ugly customer; an ugly wound
With all this competition, expect things to get ugly.
gloss: Ugliness.
pos: noun
tags: slang
uncountable
examples: I want your ugly / I want your disease.
gloss: An ugly person or thing.
pos: noun
tags: countable
slang
uncountable
gloss: Any product whose size and shape prevents it from fitting neatly on a pallet.
pos: noun
tags: countable
informal
uncountable
examples: These are firstly for products which need a cool room; secondly for products which can be stored on a standard pallet without overhang; and thirdly for products known as "the uglies" which always overhang a standard pallet.
Non-standard products (abnormal or 'uglies'): many distribution operations are designed to cater for standard palletized products.
gloss: A shade for the face, projecting from a bonnet.
pos: noun
tags: UK
countable
dated
informal
uncountable
examples: […] camp-stools, telescopes, poetry-books, blue uglies, red petticoats, and parasols of every hue.
Synonyms: bad
beat
butters
butt-ugly
clapped
coyote ugly
deform
fuckfaced
fugly
like the back end of a bus
plug-ugly
ugly
ugly as sin
unpretty
Antonyms: attractive
beautiful
gorgeous
handsome
pretty
sightly
pleasing
moral
comely
good-looking
nice
Related words: ug
ugliness
ugly man
ugly person
ugly woman
Derived words: fugly
rear one's ugly head
uggo
ugli
uglification
uglify
uglily
ugly hot
ugly law
Translations: