| / English Dictionary |
ODIOUS
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Unequivocally detestable
Example:
consequences odious to those you govern
Synonyms:
abominable; detestable; execrable; odious
Classified under:
Similar:
hateful (evoking or deserving hatred)
Derivation:
odiousness (the quality of being offensive)
odium (hate coupled with disgust)
Context examples:
Strong, fearless, and energetic, he had sufficient virtue to enable him to impose his odious vices upon a cowering people for ten or twelve years.
(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Ugh! how odious you are!
(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)
I was so repelled by his odious behaviour, particularly by this concluding instance, that I turned away without any ceremony; and left him doubled up in the middle of the garden, like a scarecrow in want of support.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
His attentive deference to her father, contrasted with his former language, was odious; and when she thought of his cruel conduct towards Mrs Smith, she could hardly bear the sight of his present smiles and mildness, or the sound of his artificial good sentiments.
(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)
Still, society associated my name and person with hers; I yet saw her and heard her daily: something of her breath (faugh!) mixed with the air I breathed; and besides, I remembered I had once been her husband—that recollection was then, and is now, inexpressibly odious to me; moreover, I knew that while she lived I could never be the husband of another and better wife; and, though five years my senior (her family and her father had lied to me even in the particular of her age), she was likely to live as long as I, being as robust in frame as she was infirm in mind.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
Do you know, there are two odious young men who have been staring at me this half hour.
(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)
What I wished to say was that Mr. Woodley was perfectly odious, but that Mr. Carruthers, who was a much older man, was more agreeable.
(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
The sight of Miss Lucas was odious to her.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
These delays and disappointments are quite odious.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
He looks upon study as an odious fetter; his time is spent in the open air, climbing the hills or rowing on the lake.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
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