hideous
[hid-ee-uh s]
- horrible or frightful to the senses; repulsive; very ugly: a hideous monster.
- shocking or revolting to the moral sense: a hideous crime.
- distressing; appalling: the hideous expense of moving one's home to another city.
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Origin of hideous
Synonyms
See more synonyms for hideous on Thesaurus.com1, 2. grisly, grim; repellent, detestable, odious, monstrous, dreadful, appalling, ghastly.
Antonyms
1. attractive, pleasing.
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Examples from the Web for hideous
Contemporary Examples
On Christmas Day, sometime after dark, a hideous fire overtook the venue: 100 firefighters, 33 fire trucks, a four-alarm blaze.
To be clear, this account is in no way meant to excuse these hideous attacks—only perhaps to explain them.
These “Book of Eli” deserts are where the imagined, however bizarre or hideous, can turn undeniably real.
With this hideous bushy outcrop, the beard has reached its end game.
The star is not entirely to blame for his hideous, hirsute transgression.
Historical Examples
Is it that it seems a strange and hideous dream, from which we will awake and rub our eyes?
Ballads of a BohemianRobert W. Service
It is, indeed, difficult to imagine what hideous beings these three sisters were.
The Gorgon's HeadNathaniel Hawthorne
Alberich was the most hideous of all the black, ugly little Nibelungs.
Opera Stories from WagnerFlorence Akin
There was a hideous fascination in this spectacle stretched before us.
In the ValleyHarold Frederic
The thing thrust so unexpectedly before her eyes was hideous in the extreme.
The Monster MenEdgar Rice Burroughs
hideous
- extremely ugly; repulsivea hideous person
- terrifying and horrific
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Word Origin
C13: from Old French hisdos, from hisde fear; of uncertain origin
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Word Origin and History for hideous
adj.
c.1300, "terrifying, horrible, dreadful," from Anglo-French hidous, Old French hideus, earlier hisdos "hideous, horrible, awful, frightening" (11c.; Modern French hideux), from hisda "horror, fear," perhaps of Germanic origin; or else from Vulgar Latin *hispidosus, from Latin hispidus "shaggy, bristly," "[b]ut this presents numerous difficulties" [OED]. Meaning "repulsive" is late 14c.
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Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper