Advertisement
Advertisement
ugly as sin
Idioms and Phrases
Physically or morally hideous, as in I can't think why she likes that dog; it's ugly as sin . This simile, first recorded in 1801, replaced the earlier ugly as the devil .Example Sentences
The Kansas Reflectorâs opinion editor deemed it âugly as sinâ in a column under a headline calling it âslapdash and dull.â
New Yorker: âDuring the Second World War, Lee, a student at Huntingdon College, in Montgomery, shunned the standard cardigan-and-pearls attire of the all-female institution in favor of a bomber jacket sheâd been given by her brother, an Army Air Corps cadet. Her language was âsalty,â and she sometimes smoked a pipe, and, while her face seems to have been pleasantly approachable, she described herself as âugly as sin.â
She said she met Vincent Van Gogh when he would buy paint from her uncle in Arles in 1888, calling him "ugly as sin" and "an awful character".
I nod, and Ma says, âThen Iâm glad Bro told you that. But the truth is, Jax, in this line of work, sometimes you donât have time to make a plan. Sometimes you just have to use whatever youâve got to do whatever you can. Now, Iâm not going to stand here and tell you I was happy to see that dinosaur coming straight at me. Ugly as sin it was, with more teeth than I could count.â
His cousin Denis said to him brutally he was âugly as sin, but you have a mindâ.
Advertisement
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American HeritageŸ Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Browse