Word of the Day

: May 3, 2011

odious

adjective OH-dee-us

What It Means

: arousing or deserving hatred or repugnance : hateful

odious in Context

Martin was an odious person: cruel, violent, and deceitful, willing to do anything to anyone to gain the wealth and power he craved.

"The audition process and the testing process is so odious and miserable that you don't want to do it unless there is a prospect of working with great people on the other end." -- From an interview with Martha Plimpton in the Windy City Times, March 23, 2011

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").