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  1. ugly love

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. adj. Displeasing to the eye; unsightly.
  2. adj. Repulsive or offensive; objectionable: an ugly remark.
  3. adj. Chiefly Southern U.S. Rude: Don't be ugly with me.
  4. adj. New England Unmanageable. Used of animals, especially cows or horses.
  5. adj. Morally reprehensible; bad.
  6. adj. Threatening or ominous: ugly black clouds.
  7. adj. Likely to cause embarrassment or trouble: "Public opinion in both nations could take an ugly turn” ( George R. Packard).
  8. adj. Marked by or inclined to anger or bad feelings; disagreeable: an ugly temper; an ugly scene.
  9. n. Informal One that is ugly.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. Unpleasing or repulsive in appearance; offensive to the sight; of very disagreeable aspect.
  2. Morally repulsive or deformed; hideous; base; vile.
  3. Disagreeable; offensive; suggestive of or threatening evil; associated with disadvantage or danger: as, an ugly rumor of defeat.
  4. Ill-natured; cross-grained; quarrelsome; ill-conditioned.
  5. Threatening painful or fatal consequences; dangerous: as, an ugly blow; an ugly cut.
  6. Synonyms Unsightly, homely, ill-favored, hard-favored, hideous.
  7. Cross, sulky, morose, ill-tempered, crabbed.
  8. n. pl. uglies (-liz). An ugly person.
  9. n. A shade for the eyes worn as an appendage to the bonnet by women about the middle of the nineteenth century. It was generally of the character of a calash, but smaller. See sunshade .
  10. To make ugly; disfigure; uglify.

Wiktionary

  1. adj. Displeasing to the eye; not aesthetically pleasing.
  2. adj. Displeasing to the ear or some other sense.
  3. adj. Offensive to one's sensibilities or morality.
  4. n. slang, uncountable ugliness
  5. n. slang An ugly person or thing.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. adj. Offensive to the sight; contrary to beauty; being of disagreeable or loathsome aspect; unsightly; repulsive; deformed.
  2. adj. Colloq. U. S. Ill-natured; crossgrained; quarrelsome.
  3. adj. colloq. Unpleasant; disagreeable; likely to cause trouble or loss.
  4. n. Colloq. Eng. A shade for the face, projecting from the bonnet.
  5. v. rare To make ugly.

WordNet 3.0

  1. adj. morally reprehensible
  2. adj. provoking horror
  3. adj. displeasing to the senses
  4. adj. inclined to anger or bad feelings with overtones of menace

Etymologies

  1. From Middle English ugly, uggely, uglike, 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. (Wiktionary)
  2. Middle English, frightful, repulsive, from Old Norse uggligr, from uggr, fear. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Examples

  • “But I _wasn't_ in fun, you ugly, naughty, _ugly_ boy," retorted Hoodie, by this time most evidently losing her temper.”

    Hoodie

  • “III.v. 62 (305, 9) [Foal is most foul, being foul to be a scoffer] [W: being found] The sense of the received reading is not fairly represented; it is, _The ugly seem most ugly, when, _ though _ugly, they are scoffers.”

    Notes to Shakespeare — Volume 01: Comedies

  • “Must say the present head of Telstra would go under the title ugly american type but American's don't have a lock on arrogance.”

    Whirlpool.net.au

  • “Adam Zeis, an editor at a website called Crackberry.com, was wearing what he called an ugly Christmas sweater T-shirt.”

    The Wall Street Journal: Things Got Ugly, and That Was the Point

  • “He testified that he worked on Sept. 11, 2001, and continued working at Ground Zero for months while engaged in what he called an "ugly" custody battle for his 14-year-old daughter.”

    The Wall Street Journal: Officer Denies Rape Charge

  • “The prime minister objected to what he called ugly remarks when Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said Turkey had meddled in Iraq's affairs.”

    CNN Transcript Sep 30, 2006

  • “The fact that art is constantly using what we call the ugly as well as what we call the commonplace, and turning both these into new forms of beauty, is a fact that considerably complicates the situation.”

    The Complex Vision

  • “Well, I don't know what you call ugly,' he answered, 'but if you had seen her stare, you would have thought her ugly enough!”

    Home Again

  • “The defense secretary's Conservative Party supporters fought back Wednesday against what they called an ugly smear campaign against the 50-year-old Fox, who married in 2005, with his former flatmate Werritty serving as best man.”

    msnbc.com: Top msnbc.com headlines

  • “He did not elaborate or describe what he meant by the word "ugly.”

    NYT > Home Page

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synonyms (8)

Words with the same meaning

  1. unsightly
  1. repulsive
  1. deformed
  1. ill-natured
  1. crossgrained
  1. quarrelsome
  1. unpleasant
  1. disagreeable

equivalents (16)

Other words for ‘ugly’

  1. evil
  2. alarming
  3. ill-favored
  1. hideous
  2. unpicturesque
  3. disfigured
  1. evil-looking
  2. repulsive
  3. monstrous
  1. unlovely
  2. unsightly
  3. fugly
  1. ill-favoured
  2. scrofulous
  3. grotesque
  1. ill-natured

same context (4)

Words that are found in similar contexts

  1. old
  1. dirty
  1. stupid
  1. hideous

rhymes (2)

Words with the same terminal sound

  1. smugly
  1. snugly

reverse dictionary (82)

Words that contain this word in their definition

  1. fugly
  2. hideous
  3. ill-favored
  4. ugliness
  5. ougly
  6. unsightly
  7. dog
  8. clever
  9. ugly
  10. sunshade
  11. to fling out
  12. inform
  13. ill-looking
  14. ill-shapen
  15. hagged
  16. haggish
  1. homely
  2. laidly
  3. grewsome
  4. gruesome
  5. hag
  6. hag's tooth
  7. cantankerous
  8. Gorgon
  9. ophiophilism
  10. ornery
  11. u
  12. uglesome
  13. unbeautiful
  14. unked
  15. unshapen
  16. viperish
  1. worricow
  2. beldam
  3. misshapen
  4. puffing-adder
  5. snag-tooth
  6. chersydridæ
  7. fright
  8. col-knife
  9. dismade
  10. evil-favoredly
  11. hideosity
  12. horse-faced
  13. ill-fa'ard
  14. crone
  15. Andersen
  16. truly
  1. uglify
  2. a dog in the manger
  3. foul
  4. fractious
  5. ugly duckling
  6. repulsive
  7. bag
  8. blink
  9. dwarf
  10. horror
  11. hole
  12. hobgoblin
  13. toady
  14. uglily
  15. ugsome
  16. deformed
  1. distorted
  2. do a job on
  3. eyesore
  4. malformed
  5. old bag
  6. witch
  7. beldame
  8. unshaped
  9. changeling
  10. deform
  11. form
  12. haggard
  13. marmoset
  14. ordinary
  15. realism
  16. unfavorable
  1. vicious
  2. viper

tags (1)

Free-form, user-generated categorization

  1. vccv

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tagging (37)

Words tagged ‘ugly’

  1. baggage
  2. beefy
  3. behoove
  4. blooper
  5. booger
  6. bowel
  7. buffet
  1. bulbous
  2. cadge
  3. chlamydia
  4. cunnilingus
  5. fart
  6. feces
  7. flatulance
  1. gargoyle
  2. grizely
  3. guesstimate
  4. igly
  5. ignoramus
  6. imbroglio
  7. interestrange
  1. jugular
  2. loofah
  3. nipple
  4. pamphlet
  5. panties
  6. pedagogy
  7. phlegm
  1. polyp
  2. pussy
  3. rectum
  4. sherbet
  5. slush
  6. sphincter
  7. tuna
  1. uranus
  2. vaginal

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Word visualization

Lists

These user-created lists contain the word ‘ugly’.

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Comments

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  • chained_bear Another definition here. Jul 16, 2009

  • pinkltinkle U-G-L-Y
    You ain't got no alibi
    You ugly
    Yeah, yeah
    you ugly Jun 22, 2009

  • Prolagus You see the boy/girl's at the bar
    Everyone thinks she's really ugly
    But I shut my eyes
    And the star of it is Photo Jenny.

    (Photo Jenny, by Belle and Sebastian) Dec 30, 2008

  • bilby "She was remarkably ugly. I mean the kind of ugly that makes me want to say she was Los Angeles ugly. She was freeway on freeway, she was concrete wall built to screen off dysfunctional slum, she was plastic palm tree behind Hollywood Boulevard. At best I could contemplate embracing her at arms' length, but the horizon is further than that." Dec 12, 2007

  • rolig If brotherly means "like a brother," does ugly mean "like an ugh!"? So maybe it should be spelled "ughly"? Dec 2, 2007

  • reesetee No, but it might make you a person who likes the letter G. ;-> Aug 3, 2007

  • sonofgroucho I always want to spell this "uggly". Does this make me a bad person? Aug 3, 2007

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‘ugly’ has been looked up 4122 times, added to 32 lists, commented on 7 times, and has a Scrabble score of 8.