''abominable'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260715204347-00-⌔

abominable - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Adjective

abominable (comparative more abominable, superlative most abominable)

• Worthy of, or causing, abhorrence, as a thing of evil omen; odious in the utmost degree; very hateful; detestable; loathsome; execrable. [first attested around 1150 to 1350]¹
  • ✤ * abominable crime*
  • ✤ *utterly abominable *
  • ✤ He committed an abominable act of cruelty.
  • ✤ But the feareful, and vnbeleeuing, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and ſorcerers, and idolaters, and all lyars, ſhall haue their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimſtone: which is the ſecond death.²
  • ✤ The parish stank of idolatry, abominable rites were practiced in secret, and in all the bounds there was no one had a more evil name for the black traffic than one Alison Sempill, who bode at the Skerburnfoot.³
  • ✤ Whosoever shall be convicted of the abominable Crime of Buggery, committed either with Mankind or with any Animal, shall be liable, at the Discretion of the Court, to be kept in Penal Servitude for Life or for any Term not less than Ten Years.⁴
  • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:abominable.
• (obsolete) Excessive, large (used as an intensifier).
• Very bad or inferior.
• Disagreeable or unpleasant. [First attested in the late 19${}^{th}$ century.]¹
  • ✤ * abominable weather*
  • ✤ The prisoners were kept in abominable conditions.
  • ✤ I want to go faster on my bike than a person with a beard. I want to be the first to own whatever’s the next spiraliser. I want it all: a carapace of insouciance over rock-hard triceps.
    This is an abominable thing to want, vain in every sense. But I’m going to set out to do whatever it takes not to decay faster than other people, and report it accurately and fairly.⁵

Etymology

From Middle English abhomynable, from Old French abominable, from Late Latin abōminābilis (“deserving abhorrence”), from abōminor (“abhor, deprecate as an ill omen”), from ab (“from, away from”) + ōminor (“forebode, predict, presage”), from ōmen (“sign, token, omen”). Formerly erroneously folk-etymologized as deriving from Latin ab- + homo, literally “away from humankind,” and therefore spelled abhominable, abhominal (Hence, Shakespeare puns on this when Hamlet speaks of incompetent actors that “imitate humanity abominably.”)

Pronunciation

• (US) IPA: /əˈbɑm.ə.nə.bl̩/, /əˈbɑm.nə.bl̩/
• (New Zealand) IPA: /ɘˈbɔm.ɘ.nɘ.bɯ/
• Audio (California): 🔊
• Hyphenation: a‧bom‧i‧na‧ble

Printed 2026-07-15.

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Footnotes

1. Lesley Brown, editor-in-chief, William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, editors (2002), “abominable”, in The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles, 5th edition, Oxford; New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 6. ↩ ↩²

2. 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Revelation 21:8, column 1: ↩

3. 1902, John Buchan, The Outgoing of the Tide: ↩

4. 1861, Parliament of the United Kingdom, “Section 61”, in Offences against the Person Act 1861 ‎${}^{s:OffencesagainstthePersonAct1861}$, page 833: ↩

5. 2017 July 8, Zoe Williams, “Fit in my 40s: ‘The brute fact is, something must be done’”, in The Guardian ‎${}^{[1]}$: ↩