Word of the Day

: January 4, 2019

abominable

adjective uh-BAH-muh-nuh-bul

What It Means

1 formal : worthy of or causing disgust or hatred : detestable

2 : very bad or unpleasant

abominable in Context

The children were informed that they had lost all television and computer privileges for a week because of their abominable treatment of the babysitter.

"In the original [movie "Overboard"], Goldie Hawn … stars as a spoiled, insufferable heiress who hires carpenter [Kurt] Russell to remodel a closet on her yacht. She's abominable to him at every turn, refuses to pay him and eventually pushes him off the ship." — Jeanne Jakle, The San Antonio Express News, 3 May 2018

Did You Know?

The tendency to hate evil omens is a vital part of the history of abominable. The word descends from the Latin verb abominari, which means "to deprecate as an ill omen" or "to detest"; abominari itself comes from ab- plus omin- ("from an omen"). When English speakers adopted abominable in the 14th century, they used it to express their disgust over evil or truly detestable things—and for 500 years that's the way things stood. In the 17th century, the word's meaning moderated, so that Scottish novelist William Black could write in A Princess of Thule (1873), "Sheila had nothing to do with the introduction of this abominable decoration." Other descendants of abominari are abominate ("to hate or loathe intensely") and abomination ("something odious or detestable").