loathsome

What it means

1. Highly offensive; abominable, sickening.

   Come on my Lords the better foot before, / Straight vvill I bring you to the lothſome pit, / VVhere I eſpied the Panther faſt a ſleepe.

   c. 1588–1593 (date written), [William Shakespeare], The Most Lamentable Romaine Tragedie of Titus Andronicus: […] (First Quarto), London: […] Iohn Danter, and are to be sold by Edward White & Thomas Millington, […], published 1594, →OCLC, [Act II, scene iii], signature [D4], recto

   2 more examples

   That grave but yesterday received one who was to have been his bride—his betrothed from childhood for whose sake he had been to far lands and gathered much wealth, but who had pined in his absence and died. He flung himself on the loathsome place, and the night-wind bore around the ravings of his despair.

   1832, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Heath's Book of Beauty, 1833, The Enchantress, page 20

   Lying on the floor was a dead man, in evening dress, with a knife in his heart. He was withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage. It was not till they had examined the rings that they recognized who it was.

   1891, Oscar Wilde, chapter XX, in The Picture of Dorian Gray, London; New York, N.Y.: Ward Lock & Co., →OCLC, page 334

In a sentence

Come on my Lords the better foot before, / Straight vvill I bring you to the lothſome pit, / VVhere I eſpied the Panther faſt a ſleepe.

c. 1588–1593 (date written), [William Shakespeare], The Most Lamentable Romaine Tragedie of Titus Andronicus: […] (First Quarto), London: […] Iohn Danter, and are to be sold by Edward White & Thomas Millington, […], published 1594, →OCLC, [Act II, scene iii], signature [D4], recto

Where it comes from

1. Proto-West Germanic*laiþasam
2. Old English*lāþsum
3. Middle Englishlothsum
4. Englishloathsome

From Middle English lothsum, from Old English *lāþsum, from Proto-West Germanic *laiþasam, equivalent to loath + -some. Cognate with Middle Low German lêtsam (“arduous”), German leidsam (“sad, sorry”).