Word of the Day

: October 9, 2016

odious

adjective OH-dee-us

What It Means

: arousing or deserving hatred or repugnance : hateful

odious in Context

Volunteers gathered on Saturday morning to scrub away the odious graffiti spray-painted on the school.

"I can't help being reminded of the progress we've made as a nation, as well as the odious past of slavery, the many men and women who have lost their lives in wars…." — Candi Castleberry Singleton, quoted in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 5 Sept. 2016

Did You Know?

Odious has been with us since the days of Middle English. We borrowed it from Anglo-French, which in turn had taken it from Latin odiosus. The Latin adjective came from the noun odium, meaning "hatred." Odium is also an ancestor of the English verb annoy (another word that came to Middle English via Anglo-French). And, at the beginning of the 17th century, odium entered English in its unaltered form, giving us a noun meaning "hatred" or "disgrace" (as in "ideas that have incurred much odium").