Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use ugly in a sentence

40 example sentences · adjective, noun, verb

Ugly means displeasing to the eye; aesthetically unpleasing. Example: “He played an ugly trick on us.”

Examples of ugly by meaning

adjectiveDispleasing to the eye; aesthetically unpleasing.

  • In Athens he looked up from his ouzo at what he called the ugliest people in the world.1957 September 5, Jack Kerouac, On the Road, New York, N.Y.: Viking Press, →OCLC
  • President Obama gave an important press conference today and even took questions from the press, but all of this was overshadowed by the fact that Obama debuted one of the ugliest suits in the history of this great nation.2014 August 28, Arit John, “No One Heard Anything Obama Just Said Because His Tan Suit Was So Loud”, in The Atlantic, archived from the...

adjectiveOffensive to one's sensibilities or morality.

  • He played an ugly trick on us.
  • It was ugly, gross.1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC

adjectiveIll-natured; crossgrained; quarrelsome.

  • an ugly temper; to feel ugly

nounAny product whose size and shape prevents it from fitting neatly on a pallet.

  • These are firstly for products which need a cool room; secondly for products which can be stored on a standard pallet without overhang; and thirdly for products known as "the uglies" which always overhang a standard pallet.1983, Australian Transport, page 16
  • Non-standard products (abnormal or 'uglies'): many distribution operations are designed to cater for standard palletized products.2022, Alan Rushton, Phil Croucher, Peter Baker, The Handbook of Logistics and Distribution Management, page 591

verbTo make ugly (sometimes with up).

  • I move noiselessly, eat my food carefully without uglying the dining table with its remnants, fold my bedsheets in neat rectangles and place them on the bed in perfect symmetry.2011, P. A. Krishnan, Muddy River
  • There is time when the absence of either integrity or humility has uglied the face of the church before the world and turned Christianity into just another cocoon of condemnation and hypocrisy.2012, Najib George Awad, And Freedom Became a Public-square, page 197
  • He would take great pleasure in uglying her up a little before killing her.2014, Jonathan Crocker, A Dream of Hope and Sorrow

More sentences with ugly

  • The hotel room was ugly, and the wallpaper clashed with the carpet.From the entry clash
  • He’s so narcissistic! He whines that he’s ugly and unlikeable just to fish for compliments.From the entry fish for compliments
  • “That's a rather ugly colour for a house, don't you think?” — “Quite.”From the entry quite
  • The modernistic architecture was both ugly and unfunctional, in spite of its futuristic appearance.From the entry futuristic
  • He hit the ball inside out in an ugly manner, but scored a four.From the entry inside out
  • He boldfaced the quote so it would stand out even though I told him it looked ugly.From the entry boldfaced
  • You need to back off, or the situation could turn ugly.From the entry back off
  • His lack of self-restraint led to several ugly scenes of debauchery and violent outburst.From the entry self-restraint
  • The inelegance of the ugly duckling stood in contrast to its ultimate life as a swan.From the entry inelegance
  • I've never seen such an ugly man in all my born days.From the entry all one's born days
  • I tend to think of her as rather ugly.From the entry think
  • Poverty is the ugly face of capitalism.From the entry face
  • The arrest was standard, when suddenly the suspect broke ugly.From the entry break
  • Too ugly to ever land a chick.From the entry land
  • She is the ugliest thing I've ever seen.From the entry ugliest
  • She's so ugly, an eight-pinter, I'd say.From the entry pinter
  • I dumped my ex wife's PT Cruiser in the ghetto, hoping a spontaneous strip party would scrap that ugly car down to the wheels overnight.From the entry strip party
  • Sarookjeet is a giga svhuman ,only jeetas idiolize this ugly manlet framelet skullcel.2024 September 12, @itsovertbhtbh, X (post), archived from the original on 16 Aug 2026. From the entry framelet
  • The jealusty getting too much re:fly jump so let me go watch ugly men now (badminton).2024 August 2, u/manidel97, “Olympics Day Seven Megathread (Friday, August 2)”, in r/olympics (Reddit post), archived from the original on…. From the entry jealusty
  • I prefer ugly pretty boys.. ugly but pretty enough to look at yfm?2020 September 26, @prettylii1, Twitter, archived from the original on 17 Dec 2023. From the entry yfm
  • Shades and the ghosts of Burnhamism have again reared its ugly face in Guyana.2020 March 15, Paras Ramoutar, “Commonwealth, CARICOM must suspend Guyana from its folds”, in Indo-Caribbean Diaspora News, archived from…. From the entry Burnhamism
  • And if I'm in line at the grocery store, I don't want to ugly cry.2019, Melissa Maimone, The Radiant Midnight, page 60. From the entry ugly cry
  • At this point, a supermartingale convergence theorem raises its ugly head again.2018, Lars Ljungqvist and Thomas J. Sargent, Recursive macroeconomic theory, 4th edition, MIT Press, page 25. From the entry raise one's head
  • Looks like you fell off the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down!2018, INSULTS and COMEBACKS. From the entry fall off the ugly tree
  • But she’s not ugly, and I think that’s what hurts the most.2017, Charlotte Crosby, “March 2016”, in Brand New Me, London: Headline Publishing Group, →ISBN, page 89. From the entry wotsit
  • Experts said the brand was "overexposed," a synonym for ugly in the fashion world.2016 February 26, Heather Long, “Michael Kors' secret to success”, in CNN Business, archived from the original on 02 Jul 2025. From the entry synonym
  • I stood up for the kid and it got ugly, with accusations being thrown in both directions.2016, Brynn Bonner, Dead in a Flash, page 249. From the entry howdy
  • Panchihhua was the ugliest town I had seen anywhere in Southwest China.2015, Bill Porter, “Final Leg”, in South of the Clouds: Travels in Southwest China, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 257. From the entry Panchihhua
  • She thought the CN Tower was ugly up close, but unexpectedly lovely when viewed from airplane windows.2014, Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven, Picador (2022), page 205. From the entry CN Tower
  • If it becomes serious enough, a variety of signs and symptoms will rear their ugly head.2014 December 15, “Stimulants Addiction Signs”, in Narcotics.com, Narcotics Anonymous. From the entry rear one's ugly head

Meaning of ugly

  1. adjective Displeasing to the eye; aesthetically unpleasing.
  2. adjective Displeasing to the ear or some other sense.
  3. adjective Offensive to one's sensibilities or morality.

Full definition of ugly

Questions about ugly in a sentence

How do you use ugly in a sentence?
Ugly is used as an adjective, noun and verb. For example: “He played an ugly trick on us.”
What is a short sentence with ugly?
“It was ugly, gross.”
What does ugly mean?
Ugly means displeasing to the eye; aesthetically unpleasing.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ugly (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use ugly in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/ugly. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.