hideous
pronunciation
How to pronounce hideous in British English:
UK [ˈhɪdiəs]
How to pronounce hideous in American English:
US [ˈhɪdiəs]
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- Adjective:
- grossly offensive to decency or morality; causing horror
- so extremely ugly as to be terrifying
Word Origin
- hideous (adj.)
- c. 1300, "terrifying, horrible, dreadful," from Anglo-French hidous, Old French hideus, earlier hisdos "hideous, horrible, awful, frightening" (11c.; Modern French hideux), from hisda "horror, fear," perhaps of Germanic origin; or else from Vulgar Latin *hispidosus, from Latin hispidus "shaggy, bristly," "[b]ut this presents numerous difficulties" [OED]. Meaning "repulsive" is late 14c.
Example
- 1. The answer is that he faced a truly hideous dilemma .
- 2. Ireland these years produces poets and novelists at the same rate as hideous bungalows .
- 3. But saddam hussein 's vaunted weapons of mass destruction turned out to be a chimera and the cost in american and especially iraqi lives has been hideous .
- 4. Dorian , who has hidden the picture in his attic , shows basil the now hideous face , and kills him .
- 5. Certainly , and we insist upon this point , he had not yielded without resistance to that monster , to that infamous angel , to that hideous hero , who enraged almost as much as he amazed him .