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ugly

Pronunciation: /ˈʌɡli/

The English word “ugly” has 10 meanings listed here.

adjective

  1. Displeasing to the eye; aesthetically unpleasing.
  2. Displeasing to the ear or some other sense.
  3. Offensive to one's sensibilities or morality.
  4. Ill-natured; crossgrained; quarrelsome.
  5. Unpleasant; disagreeable; likely to cause trouble or loss.

noun

  1. Ugliness.
  2. An ugly person or thing.
  3. Any product whose size and shape prevents it from fitting neatly on a pallet.
  4. A shade for the face, projecting from a bonnet.

verb

  1. To make ugly (sometimes with up).

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…

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.