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What is "awful"

Crossword clues for awful

awful
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
awful
I.adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a nasty/awful suspicion
▪ Suddenly I had a nasty suspicion that the boss was going to make me redundant.
a real/awful/terrible etc nuisance
▪ The dogs next door are a real nuisance.
a severe/terrible/awful blow
▪ The news was a terrible blow for his family.
a terrible/awful revenge
▪ Caesar returned to Rome to exact a terrible revenge.
a terrible/awful shock
▪ Her death was a terrible shock to everyone.
an awful lot (also a whole lotinformal) (= a very large amount or number)
▪ He spends an awful lot of time on the computer.
an awful/appalling tragedy (=very unpleasant and shocking)
▪ This is an appalling tragedy which will haunt us for the rest of our lives.
awful/dreadful/terrible weather
▪ We came home early because of the awful weather.
bad/poor/terrible/awful
▪ Why do doctors have such terrible handwriting?
smell bad/awful etc
▪ Cigarettes make your clothes smell awful.
taste horrible/awful/disgusting/foul
▪ The tea tasted horrible.
terrible/awful
▪ I woke up with a terrible pain in my side.
the awful/terrible/dreadful etc truth
▪ She could not bring herself to tell them the awful truth.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADVERB
how
▪ Barbaric, we might exclaim, how awful!
▪ You have to have been there before to remember how awful it was.
▪ And how awful to imagine people of their age doing that.
▪ Oh, Alice. How awful you really are.
▪ For some reason she remembered how awful it was when she first moved in after their marriage.
▪ They may not even realize how awful they make you and your sisters feel.
▪ We'd been saying how awful it was, how sorry we were for Connie.
▪ Your ride to Lincoln will probably illustrate how awful long-distance cycling in Britain can be, and how few facilities are provided.
just
▪ It is awful, just awful.
▪ The hotel that we stayed in was just awful, and the food provided was worse.
most
▪ And, most awful of all, was Amy a murderess?
▪ The most awful thing has happened.
▪ It was the most awful moment of his life and he didn't know how to handle it.
▪ They were Elephant Feet, the most dreaded, the most awful things in the world.
▪ There'd be the most awful dust-up.
▪ The world's most awful human problem, third-world poverty, appears to have hardened the hearts of the prosperous.
▪ I had the most awful time with him.
▪ She's the most awful snob.
pretty
▪ Collectively politicians tend to be pretty awful.
▪ I should have said no, because he looked pretty awful on the road.
▪ The state of the camps, particularly for transit prisoners, is pretty awful.
▪ In the intense glare of the television lights, they looked pretty awful.
really
▪ It's a really awful night, blowing heavens hard.
▪ It was really awful, travelling back to Leeds and finding your life cave in on you in a week.
so
▪ Luckily the weather was so awful that nothing was flying, so there was only routine work to attend to.
▪ Marguerite believed it was not so awful, missing a day now and then.
▪ What's so awful about this situation is that we can't have a funeral.
▪ Too many of the conjunctions and alignments here are so awful that one hopes they are very temporary indeed.
▪ There are many great offensive players in the game right now, maybe because the pitching is so awful.
▪ If Hell consists of such illusions, is it so awful?
▪ Why was fate so awful to Kiki?
too
▪ This idea was too awful to contemplate.
▪ But confession was too awful to contemplate, even with Rose.
▪ This school is too awful to deserve passive acceptance.
▪ The worst injury it too awful to show.
▪ The implications were too awful to contemplate.
▪ People would not stay married if it were too awful.
▪ Spell after spell crashed down on the Dark Elves, the carnage was too awful to contemplate.
▪ In any case, it would be too awful having to explain why she needed it.
■ NOUN
day
▪ But Joan was harking back to that awful day.
▪ They waited at the North Col for three awful days, watching the deserted ridge for any signs of life.
▪ It's been the most awful day of my life.
▪ Wasn't that just the typical end to a perfectly awful day?
feeling
▪ I've an awful feeling we should have gone right at the last junction.
▪ This play, and all these awful feelings, would be safely locked up.
▪ I've got an awful feeling this deadness will creep up and up and kill me - like Socrates.
▪ She sat down again, and the awful feeling about the Lumsdens came back to her.
▪ It hurt very, very badly, but what hurt most was the awful feeling of having let herself down.
lot
▪ It must save an awful lot of embarrassment.
▪ You can say an awful lot in seven seconds, and you can say very little in an hour and a half.
▪ He is the embodiment of a restaurateur's nightmare, some one who behaves grotesquely yet spends an awful lot of money.
▪ What an awful lot &038; and the joke is what a long way to go to a concert.
▪ I seem to have collected an awful lot of those parking-tokens over the last few months.
▪ An awful lot of his 8 million customers are angry.
▪ You talk an awful lot of wind.
▪ If you didn't, you were bawled out, and that took an awful lot of getting used to.
moment
▪ For one awful moment she had thought he was gone, but those signs of activity proved otherwise.
▪ All night I anticipated the awful moment when the cabins and the cockpit basket would break adrift.
▪ It was the most awful moment of his life and he didn't know how to handle it.
▪ For an awful moment, she thought that Jamie had found out something about her real connection with Puddephat.
place
▪ She had to work in that awful place and get nits and steal and be beaten for wetting the bed.
▪ Research universities are awful places for freshmen to be adrift, to be searching, to be in need.
▪ The house was an awful place, Carolyn thought.
▪ I bought this bloody awful place.
▪ Dear brother, let me out of this awful place and the blessed Virgin will reward you.
thing
▪ He told me he was called Willie, but I though that was a jolly awful thing to do to anyone.
▪ You have no idea of what awful things have happened here.
▪ The most awful thing has happened.
▪ The awful thing was that it wasn't over, Jean knew that.
▪ If I pulled one book out, lord knows what awful thing might result.
▪ The awful thing was that, as I said it, I began to have serious doubts about it.
▪ And the truly awful thing was, Alistair was right.
things
▪ You have no idea of what awful things have happened here.
▪ They were Elephant Feet, the most dreaded, the most awful things in the world.
▪ I also had dreadful nightmares - of awful things like giving birth to a cat because they can be carriers of toxoplasmosis.
▪ My father asked me why I said these awful things.
▪ He was calling me all the time - awful things.
truth
▪ Well now the awful truth can be revealed, other people's work is not perfect.
▪ People crowded around, and the awful truth came out: the barrel wasn't as full as it should have been.
▪ Then she remembered Edward's march and the awful truth began to dawn.
▪ They believed in the myth and Diana could not bring herself to tell them the awful truth.
▪ Gedanken's tummy turned over as the awful truth dawned on her.
▪ They drank coffee, Jay's brain slurring off some awful truth.
▪ Shannon lay back against the pillows, squeezing her eyes tight shut, as though that could block out the awful truth.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ a really awful concert
▪ an awful power
▪ I felt awful about not being able to help.
▪ It sounds awful, but I just can't stand his parents.
▪ The soup tasted awful.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ At 300dpi the quality achieved with photographs can generally be described as poor to awful.
▪ But those are still awful numbers.
▪ He truly represents an awful lot from a developmental standpoint.
▪ My father and Ernest were safe, but the awful news of Elizabeth's death killed my father.
▪ Philip Seymour Hoffman blows them all away with a scene-stealing black comic turn as Dickie's awful preppie buddy.
▪ The curtains in the photo are an awful fifties maroon, the color of dried blood.
▪ Then as the electric doors swished open and three police officers jumped out on to the ballast, the awful realisation dawned.
▪ You seem to take up an awful lot of energy and time.
II.adverb
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ an awful cute kid
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Awful

Awful \Aw"ful\, a.

  1. Oppressing with fear or horror; appalling; terrible; as, an awful scene. ``The hour of Nature's awful throes.''
    --Hemans.

  2. Inspiring awe; filling with profound reverence, or with fear and admiration; fitted to inspire reverential fear; profoundly impressive.

    Heaven's awful Monarch.
    --Milton.

  3. Struck or filled with awe; terror-stricken. [Obs.]

    A weak and awful reverence for antiquity.
    --I. Watts.

  4. Worshipful; reverential; law-abiding. [Obs.]

    Thrust from the company of awful men.
    --Shak.

  5. Frightful; exceedingly bad; great; -- applied intensively; as, an awful bonnet; an awful boaster. [Slang]

    Syn: See Frightful.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
awful

c.1300, agheful "worthy of respect or fear," from aghe, an earlier form of awe (n.), + -ful. The Old English word was egefull. Weakened sense "very bad" is from 1809; weakened sense of "exceedingly" is by 1818.

Wiktionary
awful

a. 1 Oppressing with fear or horror; appalling, terrible. 2 (context now rare English) Inspiring awe; filling with profound reverence or respect; profoundly impressive. 3 Struck or filled with awe. 4 (context obsolete English) terror-stricken. 5 worshipful; reverential; law-abiding. 6 exceedingly great; usually applied intensively. 7 Very bad. adv. (context colloquial English) very, extremely; as, an '''awful''' big house.

Related phrases:
WordNet
awful

  1. adj. exceptionally bad or displeasing; "atrocious taste"; "abominable workmanship"; "an awful voice"; "dreadful manners"; "a painful performance"; "terrible handwriting"; "an unspeakable odor came sweeping into the room" [syn: atrocious, abominable, dreadful, painful, terrible, unspeakable]

  2. causing fear or dread or terror; "the awful war"; "an awful risk"; "dire news"; "a career or vengeance so direful that London was shocked"; "the dread presence of the headmaster"; "polio is no longer the dreaded disease it once was"; "a dreadful storm"; "a fearful howling"; "horrendous explosions shook the city"; "a terrible curse" [syn: dire, direful, dread(a), dreaded, dreadful, fearful, fearsome, frightening, horrendous, horrific, terrible]

  3. offensive or even (of persons) malicious; "in a nasty mood"; "a nasty accident"; "a nasty shock"; "a nasty smell"; "a nasty trick to pull"; "Will he say nasty things at my funeral?"- Ezra Pound [syn: nasty] [ant: nice]

  4. inspired by a feeling of fearful wonderment or reverence; "awed by the silence"; "awful worshippers with bowed heads" [syn: awed]

  5. inspiring awe or admiration or wonder; "New York is an amazing city"; "the Grand Canyon is an awe-inspiring sight"; "the awesome complexity of the universe"; "this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath"- Melville; "Westminster Hall's awing majesty, so vast, so high, so silent" [syn: amazing, awe-inspiring, awesome, awing]

awful

adv. used as intensifiers; "terribly interesting"; "I'm awful sorry" [syn: terribly, awfully, frightfully]

Wikipedia
Awful (song)

"Awful" is the twelfth single, and also third EP, by American alternative rock band Hole, from their third studio album Celebrity Skin. Released in April 1999 by Geffen Records as a CD single, the song's lyrics explore how the media and modern pop culture corrupt young girls and how they should rebel against this. The line "swing low, sweet cherry" in the song is an allusion to the African American spiritual hymn, " Swing Low, Sweet Chariot".

Awful

Awful may refer to:

  • "Awful" (song), a 1999 single by the band Hole
  • Awful Orphan, a 1949 cartoon
  • Awful Gardner, a notorious gambler
  • Awful End, a 2002 children's novel
  • " Awful, Beautiful Life", a song by Darryl Worley
  • Awful Mess Mystery, a Wolfie album
  • The Awful DYNNE, a character from The Phantom Tollbooth
  • The Awful Truth, a 1937 comedy
  • Something Awful, a comedy website, The Good Earth
Related phrases:

Usage examples of "awful".

His sword trailed in his paralyzed hand as he glared, open-mouthed, stunned by the realization which was too abysmal and awful for the mind to grasp.

I petitioned for a cup of chill aconite, My descent to awful Hades had been soft, for now must I go With the curse by father Zeus cast on ambition immoderate.

In this state of disgrace and agony, two bishops, Isaiah of Rhodes and Alexander of Diospolis, were dragged through the streets of Constantinople, while their brethren were admonished, by the voice of a crier, to observe this awful lesson, and not to pollute the sanctity of their character.

Knowledge of alcoholism would have saved me an awful lot of suffering.

And did I get that tin out in a hurry - and I felt awful, Asey, sneaking about with it!

You blasphemed the aspidistra and something awful has come down that chimney!

Immense asses strained neon pink and chartreuse capris to the awful bursting point.

Then came an awful ripping sound, as of a body being torn asunder, and he felt the ground quiver beneath him again.

When Bunting began to ask Joe Chandler about the last of those awful Avenger murders, she even listened with a certain languid interest to all he had to say.

It seemed strange that The Avenger had stayed his hand, for, as Joe had said only last evening, it was full time that he should again turn that awful, mysterious searchlight of his on himself.

They ran to do his bidding, and were joined by Tor Bolson and Erl Fostison, all glad of something practical to do to break the awful tension of the waiting and the news.

Susan, who had by this time learned to consider the awful Byles Gridley as her next friend and faithful counsellor.

Filfaeril grinned viciously and glided to his side without stumbling or tripping or finding some other excuse to let even one of the awful canapes slide off the tray.

Cicero had pronounced that awful phrase, a general cancellation of debt, the House now broke into audible murmuring.

In front of this entrance, on a space which had been cleared of dead and of the shields and spears which were scattered in all directions as they had fallen or been thrown from the hands of their owners, stood and lay the survivors of the awful struggle, and at their feet were four wounded men.