ugly
pronunciation
How to pronounce ugly in British English:
UK [ˈʌɡli]
How to pronounce ugly in American English:
US [ˈʌɡli]
-
- Adjective:
- displeasing to the senses and morally revolting
- deficient in beauty
- inclined to anger or bad feelings with overtones of menace
- morally reprehensible
- threatening or foreshadowing evil or tragic developments
- provoking horror
Word Origin
- ugly
- ugly: [13] Ugly originally meant ‘horrible, frightening’; ‘offensive to the sight’ is a secondary development, first recorded in the 14th century. The word was borrowed from Old Norse uggligr, a derivative of the verb ugga ‘fear’. In the early 1930s it was applied, in the altered spelling ugli, to a new sort of citrus fruit, a hybrid of the grapefruit and the tangerine; the reference is to the fruit’s unprepossessing knobbly skin.
- ugly (adj.)
- mid-13c., uglike "frightful or horrible in appearance," from a Scandinavian source, such as Old Norse uggligr "dreadful, fearful," from uggr "fear, apprehension, dread" (perhaps related to agg "strife, hate") + -ligr "-like" (see -ly (1)). Meaning softened to "very unpleasant to look at" late 14c. Extended sense of "morally offensive" is attested from c. 1300; that of "ill-tempered" is from 1680s. Among words for this concept, ugly is unusual in being formed from a root for "fear, dread." More common is a compound meaning "ill-shaped" (such as Greek dyseides, Latin deformis, Irish dochrud, Sanskrit ku-rupa). Another Germanic group has a root sense of "hate, sorrow" (see loath). Ugly duckling (1877) is from the story by Hans Christian Andersen, first translated from Danish to English 1846. Ugly American "U.S. citizen who behaves offensively abroad" is first recorded 1958 as a book title.
Example
- 1. Ugly compromise is the essence of politics .
- 2. His face was old and ugly and yellow with disease .
- 3. Ugly men were better off not including one .
- 4. It hardly mattered that the ugly face was white .
- 5. Now they glimpsed a different , ugly german , smug about his economy and untroubled by his past .