Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Wicked; abominable.
  • adjective Informal Very unappealing; ugly.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Hateful; odious; reprehensible.
  • Hence Reprehensibly great; enormous; aggravated: sometimes used (in a similar sense) of persons.
  • Synonyms Wicked, Infamous, etc. (see atrocious); flagitious, dreadful, horrible.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Hateful; hatefully bad; flagrant; odious; atrocious; giving great offense; -- applied to deeds or to character.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Totally reprehensible.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective extremely wicked, deeply criminal

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old French haineus, from haine, hatred, from hair, to hate, from Frankish *hatjan.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old French haineus (compare French haineux) from haïr ("to hate"), of Germanic origin.

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Examples

Comments

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  • An appropriately ugly word.

    July 19, 2007