Synonyms for ugliness
- disfigurement
- hideousness
- homeliness
- offensiveness
- plainness
- repulsiveness
- unseemliness
- unsightliness
- monstrousness
Antonyms for ugliness
EXAMPLES FROM THE WEB FOR UGLINESS
I could not find the words to explain to a man my horror of ugliness.
Aftervard, v'en beauty is common as ugliness is now—ah, I do not know.
His embarrassment, or ugliness of temper, or whatever it was, was gone.
They were all sorry for me in my misery, and were touched by my ugliness.
You can devote yourself to the elimination of ugliness, to the increase of beauty.
But what a rich mine of ugliness for the pen of a rising young author like me!
I remember thinking that, feeling that, and—just for a minute loving my own ugliness.
In it one sees only the vices of other races, and the ugliness of other nations.
That since beauty is the opposite of ugliness, they are two?
I am taught the poorness of our invention, the ugliness of towns and palaces.
WORD ORIGIN
mid-13c., uglike "frightful or horrible in appearance," from Old Norse uggligr "dreadful, fearful," from uggr "fear, apprehension, dread" (perhaps related to agg "strife, hate") + -ligr "-like." Meaning softened to "very unpleasant to look at" late 14c. Extended sense of "morally offensive" is attested from c.1300; that of "ill-tempered" is from 1680s.
Among words for this concept, ugly is unusual in being formed from a root for "fear, dread." More common is a compound meaning "ill-shaped" (e.g. Greek dyseides, Latin deformis, Irish dochrud, Sanskrit ku-rupa). Another Germanic group has a root sense of "hate, sorrow" (see loath). Ugly duckling (1877) is from the story by Hans Christian Andersen, first translated from Danish to English 1846. Ugly American "U.S. citizen who behaves offensively abroad" is first recorded 1958 as a book title.