abominable
/əˈbɒm(ə)nəb(ə)l
/- Lalla, in his opening remarks, told Wellington the prosecution had to be ‘the most vile and most abominable abuse of the prosecutorial process in the country.’
- And there are certain crimes still that are so heinous, so wretched, and so abominable that, yes, they do cry out for vengeance, and they do cry out for the death penalty.
- For years now I have been against capital punishment, arguing that killing someone either illegally or legally was the most abominable and most repugnant of crimes.
Synonyms
- Her handwriting is abominable, like one-legged chickens tied together and walking from and ink well onto paper.
- Indeed, the match furnished the quickest booking this reporter has ever witnessed, St Mirren defender Kevin McGowne felling Paul Sheerin with an abominable tackle after just 25 seconds.
- Karen Kohlhaas's direction plays wholeheartedly into the leaden preciosity of the text and manages to make an already dreadful play even more abominable.
Origin
Middle English: via Old French from Latin abominabilis, from abominari (see abominate). The term was once widely believed to be from ab- 'away from' + Latin homine (from homo 'human being'), thus 'inhuman, beastly', and frequently spelled abhominable until the 17th century.
People used to think that abominable came from Latin ab- ‘away from’ and homo ‘human being’, and so literally meant ‘inhuman or beastly’. Consequently, until the 17th century it was frequently spelt abhominable, a spelling found in Shakespeare. In fact, the word comes from Latin abominari, meaning ‘to regard something as a bad omen’, and is related to omen (late 16th century) and ominous (late 16th century). Abominable Snowman is another name for the Himalayan Yeti. The name was brought back by the Royal Geographical Society expedition mounted in 1921 to Mount Everest, which found mysterious footprints in the snow. Abominable Snowman is a translation of Tibetan Meetoh Gangmi, the name the Sherpa porters gave to the animal responsible for the tracks. Yeti is from Tibetan yeh-the ‘little man-like animal’.