hideous

comparative more hideous · superlative most hideous

1. Extremely or shockingly ugly.

   I’m sorry to break it to you, but your dress looks truly hideous.

   2 more examples

   the Duke's army departed unmolested : but the highway along which he retired presented a piteous and hideous spectacle.

   1849–1861, Thomas Babington Macaulay, The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volume (please specify |volume=I to V), London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, →OCLC

   Like the "Kas," these locomotives were originally semi-streamlined, although their conical snout was not nearly so hideous as the sloping mock-radiators adorning the bigger engines.

   1954 August, J. B. Snell, “The New Zealand Government Railways—2”, in Railway Magazine, page 561

2. Having a very unpleasant or frightening sound.

   He started up, growling at first, but finding his leg broken, fell down again; and then got upon three legs, and gave the most hideous roar that ever I heard.

   1719 May 6 (Gregorian calendar), [Daniel Defoe], The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, […], London: […] W[illiam] Taylor […], →OCLC

3. Hateful; shocking.

   Sure, you have some hideous matter to deliver.

   c. 1601–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Twelfe Night, or What You Will”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene v]

   1 more example

   [W]hat may this meane, / That thou, dead corſe, againe in compleate ſteele, / Reuiſſits thus the glimſes of the Moone, / Making night hideous, and vve fooles of nature, / So horridely to ſhake our diſpoſition, / VVith thoughts beyond the reaches of our ſoules?

   c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shake-speare, The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke: […] (First Quarto), London: […] [Valentine Simmes] for N[icholas] L[ing] and Iohn Trundell, published 1603, →OCLC, [Act I, scene iv], signature C3, recto

4. Morally offensive; shocking; detestable.

   when the wind is shrieking, and the men are yelling, and every plank thunders with trampling feet right over Jonah’s head; in all this raging tumult, Jonah sleeps his hideous sleep.

   1851 November 14, Herman Melville, chapter IX, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC