ugly

Etymology

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.

adj

1. Displeasing to the eye; aesthetically unpleasing.
2. Displeasing to the ear or some other sense.
3. Offensive to one's sensibilities or morality.
   He played an ugly trick on us.
4. (Southern US) Ill-natured; crossgrained; quarrelsome.
   an ugly temper; to feel ugly
5. Unpleasant; disagreeable; likely to cause trouble or loss.
   an ugly rumour; an ugly customer; an ugly wound
   With all this competition, expect things to get ugly.

noun

1. (slang, uncountable) Ugliness.
   I want your ugly / I want your disease. 2009, Lady Gaga, RedOne, Bad Romance
2. (slang) An ugly person or thing.
3. (logistics, informal) Any product whose size and shape prevents it from fitting neatly on a pallet.
   These are firstly for products which need a cool room; secondly for products which can be stored on a standard pallet without overhang; and thirdly for products known as "the uglies" which always overhang a standard pallet. 1983, Australian Transport, page 16
   Non-standard products (abnormal or 'uglies'): many distribution operations are designed to cater for standard palletized products. 2022, Alan Rushton, Phil Croucher, Peter Baker, The Handbook of Logistics and Distribution Management, page 591
4. (UK, informal, dated) A shade for the face, projecting from a bonnet.

verb

1. (transitive, nonstandard) To make ugly (sometimes with up).
   I move noiselessly, eat my food carefully without uglying the dining table with its remnants, fold my bedsheets in neat rectangles and place them on the bed in perfect symmetry. 2011, P. A. Krishnan, Muddy River
   There is time when the absence of either integrity or humility has uglied the face of the church before the world and turned Christianity into just another cocoon of condemnation and hypocrisy. 2012, Najib George Awad, And Freedom Became a Public-square, page 197
   He had spent half of his journey mulling over how he would savour his revenge. He could already envision her pretty little form lying prone at his feet. He would take great pleasure in uglying her up a little before killing her. 2014, Jonathan Crocker, A Dream of Hope and Sorrow