ugly

CEFRA2

/ˈʌɡli/

adjective

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

  1. 01

    adjective

    Unpleasant or unattractive to look at.

  2. 02

    adjective

    Extra detail

    Offensive to one's sensibilities or morality.

Examples

  • That ugly butcher resembles that fictional monster.

  • The big ugly tree destroys the beauty of the house.

At a glance

Sits at A2 on the CEFR scale

Senses
5
Parts of speech
1
Citations
5
Synonyms
5

Deep Dive

adjective

Extra meanings

  1. Displeasing to the eye; aesthetically unpleasing.

  2. Displeasing to the ear or some other sense.

  3. Ill-natured; crossgrained; quarrelsome.

More examples

In context

  • He played an ugly trick on us.

  • an ugly rumour; an ugly customer; an ugly wound

  • an ugly temper; to feel ugly

Synonyms

Antonyms

Quick test

Two questions on this entry. Nothing is scored.

Question 1 · Quick check

The blank painting had weird colors and was placed in the darkest corner.

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

Nearby

Origin

adjective

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-).