Skip to content
ARCHIEENGLISH
LearnPlayWordsRanking
  • Learn
  • Play
  • Words
  • Ranking
  • Mine
← Vocabulary

detestable

UK/dɪˈtɛstəbl̩/US/dɪˈtɛstəbl̩/
adjectiveC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #12,831 of 15,258neutral

Detestable means deserving to be hated. A detestable crime, detestable behaviour, utterly detestable.

It is a strong moral judgement and belongs to acts more than to people. The Latin behind it means to curse while calling the gods to witness, which is a great deal of force for one word.

Definitions of detestable

  1. 1adjectivedetestableDeserving to be hated.C1

    “Bullying a child who cannot fight back is a detestable thing to do.”

detestable is a quality.

Where it comes from

Latin detestabilis comes from detestari, to curse while calling the gods to witness.

  1. Middle French

    détestable

  2. English, today

    detestable

From Middle French détestable. by surface analysis, en + detest + able.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

detestable in the wild

  • Schmuck, or shmuck, is a pejorative term meaning one who is stupid or foolish, or an obnoxious, contemptible or detestable person.

    Schmuck (pejorative)

  • If detestable traits are unveiled, familiarity will in fact breed contempt.

    Proximity principle

  • The Commonwealth (Adultery) Act of May 1650 ("An Act for suppressing the detestable sins of Incest, Adultery and Fornication") was an act of the English Rump Parliament.

    Commonwealth (Adultery) Act (1650)

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.