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ABOMINABLE
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I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Exceptionally bad or displeasing
Example:
an unspeakable odor came sweeping into the room
Synonyms:
abominable; atrocious; awful; dreadful; painful; terrible; unspeakable
Classified under:
Similar:
bad (having undesirable or negative qualities)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Unequivocally detestable
Example:
consequences odious to those you govern
Synonyms:
abominable; detestable; execrable; odious
Classified under:
Similar:
hateful (evoking or deserving hatred)
Derivation:
abominate (find repugnant)
Context examples:
But I shall always think it a very abominable sort of proceeding.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
Their next business is from herbs, minerals, gums, oils, shells, salts, juices, sea-weed, excrements, barks of trees, serpents, toads, frogs, spiders, dead men’s flesh and bones, birds, beasts, and fishes, to form a composition, for smell and taste, the most abominable, nauseous, and detestable, they can possibly contrive, which the stomach immediately rejects with loathing, and this they call a vomit; or else, from the same store-house, with some other poisonous additions, they command us to take in at the orifice above or below (just as the physician then happens to be disposed) a medicine equally annoying and disgustful to the bowels; which, relaxing the belly, drives down all before it; and this they call a purge, or a clyster.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
Here’s the record of the Tarleton murders, and the case of Vamberry, the wine merchant, and the adventure of the old Russian woman, and the singular affair of the aluminium crutch, as well as a full account of Ricoletti of the club-foot, and his abominable wife.
(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Your grammar is excellent, Professor Hilton informed him, staring at him through heavy spectacles; but you know nothing, positively nothing, in the other branches, and your United States history is abominable—there is no other word for it, abominable.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
Moriarty himself is enough to make any letter illustrious, and here is Morgan the poisoner, and Merridew of abominable memory, and Mathews, who knocked out my left canine in the waiting-room at Charing Cross, and, finally, here is our friend of to-night.
(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
"Oh, my tongue, my abominable tongue! Why can't I learn to keep it quiet?" groaned Jo, remembering words which had been her undoing.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
The pitch was bubbling in the seams; the nasty stench of the place turned me sick; if ever a man smelt fever and dysentery, it was in that abominable anchorage.
(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
My stupidity was abominable, for here we have all the advantage of what I saw at Ecclesford; and it is so useful to have anything of a model!
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
Can such abominable pride as his have ever done him good?
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
It did appear—there was no concealing it—exactly like the pretence of being in love with her, instead of Harriet; an inconstancy, if real, the most contemptible and abominable! and she had difficulty in behaving with temper.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
