ugly
adjective
- aesthetic concept
Wiktionary
Pronunciation: /ˈʌɡli/ / /ˈɜɡli/ / /ˈɘ̞ɡli/
adj
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-).
- Displeasing to the eye; aesthetically unpleasing.
“the ugly view of his deformed crimes”
“O, I have passed a miserable night, / So full of ugly sights, of ghastly dreams.”
- Displeasing to the ear or some other sense.
- Offensive to one's sensibilities or morality.
“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.”
- Ill-natured; crossgrained; quarrelsome.
“an ugly temper; to feel ugly”
- Unpleasant; disagreeable; likely to cause trouble or loss.
“an ugly rumour; an ugly customer; an ugly wound”
“With all this competition, expect things to get ugly.”
noun
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-).
- Ugliness.
“I want your ugly / I want your disease.”
- An ugly person or thing.
- Any product whose size and shape prevents it from fitting neatly on a pallet.
“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.”
- A shade for the face, projecting from a bonnet.
“[…] camp-stools, telescopes, poetry-books, blue uglies, red petticoats, and parasols of every hue.”
verb
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-).
- To make ugly (sometimes with up).
“I move noiselessly, eat my food carefully without uglying the dining table with its remnants, fold my bedsheets in neat rectangles and place them on the bed in perfect symmetry.”
“There is time when the absence of either integrity or humility has uglied the face of the church before the world and turned Christianity into just another cocoon of condemnation and hypocrisy.”