Meanings
- informalnot comparablehideously; with an extreme degree of ugliness
“And nothing could ever compel me to wear a gable, the most eye-gougingly ugly fashion accessory ever created.”
2012, Katherine Longshore, Gilt2 more examples
I'm about to return the telephone to its cradle, and resume work on Candidate Two, when a middle-aged woman dressed in an eye-gougingly hideous neon orange floral print dress approaches my door.
2010, Julie Kushner, Life Sucks, Death Bites, page 15God-given talent has little to do with it. Chick's draftsmanship is amateurish, at best crudely effective, at worst eye-gougingly awful.
2012, Mary Dery, I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts, page 183
Origin
From eye + gouging + -ly, suggesting that one would gouge out one's own eyes rather than look at something so ugly.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
eye-gougingly. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/eye-gougingly
“eye-gougingly.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/eye-gougingly. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “eye-gougingly,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/eye-gougingly.
Source: eye-gougingly on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.