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abhorrent

UK/æbˈ(h)ɒɹənt/US/æbˈhɔɹənt/
adjectiveC2Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #12,977 of 15,258neutral

Abhorrent means utterly detestable to your moral sense. Morally abhorrent, an abhorrent act, abhorrent to me.

It is a judgement about right and wrong rather than about taste, which is what separates it from disgusting. The Latin means to shudder away from, and abhorrent takes to when it names whose sense is offended.

Definitions of abhorrent

  1. 1adjectiveabhorrentUtterly detestable to your moral sense.C2

    “The idea of hurting an animal for fun is abhorrent to her.”

abhorrent is a quality.

Where it comes from

Latin abhorrere means to shrink back from, from ab plus horrere, to shudder.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *ǵʰers-

  2. Latin

    abhorrens

  3. English, today

    abhorrent

Built from

  • abhorreō · Latin — abhor

Borrowed from Latin abhorrens, present active participle of abhorreō (“abhor”). Equivalent to abhor + ent.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

abhorrent in the wild

  • Similarly, death worship is used as a derogatory term to accuse certain groups of morally abhorrent practices which set no value on human life.

    List of death deities

  • The Ten Abominations were a list of offenses under traditional Chinese law that were regarded as the most abhorrent, regarded as ultimate threat to civilized society.

    Ten Abominations

  • In 1989 the party's deputy president resigned in protest at the "abhorrent literature... anti-Asian, anti-Jews, anti-everyone" that had been circulated at party meetings.

    Grey Power

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the abhorreō family

abhorabhorrent

abhorrent — used about once every 18,318 pages · #12,977 · point at the bar for the others