English

Adjective

ugsome ‎(comparative more ugsome, superlative most ugsome)

1. (chiefly Britain dialectal, Scotland, Northern England) Ugly; horrible; disgusting; offensive, loathsome, repellent.
   • a. 1555, Hugh Latimer, Sermon on Good Friday, 1808, Legh Richmond (editor), The Fathers of the English Church, Volume 2, page 436,

     This horror of death is worse than death itself, and is more ugsome.

   • 1972, W. H. Auden, Epistle to a Godson: and Other Poems, page 28,

     Still, it's a cosy country, / unracked by riots or strikes / and backward at drug-taking: / I've heard of a dozen lands / where life sounds far more ugsome, / fitter goals for your disgust.

   • 1975, Scottish Mountaineering Club Journal, Volume 30, Issues 163-166, page 397,

     We have italicised the more ugsome parts of the S.S.C. paper so that those of our readers who are too busy mountaineering to read the whole thing may grasp the fundamental psychopathology of the unattractive predators that have battened onto us.

Derived terms

• ugsomeness