ugly

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   displeasing to the senses

   an ugly face

2. 2
   adj

   Displeasing to the eye; aesthetically unpleasing.

   the ugly view of his deformed crimes

3. 3
   adj

   Offensive to one's sensibilities or morality.

   He played an ugly trick on us.

4. 4
   adj

   Ill-natured; crossgrained; quarrelsome.

   an ugly temper; to feel ugly

5. 5
   adj

   Unpleasant; disagreeable; likely to cause trouble or loss.

   an ugly rumour; an ugly customer; an ugly wound

6. 6
   noun

   Ugliness.

   I want your ugly / I want your disease.

7. 7
   noun

   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.

8. 8
   noun

   A shade for the face, projecting from a bonnet.

   […] camp-stools, telescopes, poetry-books, blue uglies, red petticoats, and parasols of every hue.

Etymology

Inherited 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. For the meaning development compare Bulgarian грозен (grozen) (< Proto-Slavic *grozьnъ), Russian стра́шный (strášnyj) (< Proto-Slavic *strašьnъ < *straxъ); Latin foedus (…