HATEFUL

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does hateful mean? 

• HATEFUL (adjective)
  The adjective HATEFUL has 2 senses:

1. evoking or deserving hatred

2. characterized by malice

  Familiarity information: HATEFUL used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• HATEFUL (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Evoking or deserving hatred

Context example:

no vice is universally as hateful as ingratitude

Similar:

abominable; detestable; execrable; odious (unequivocally detestable)

unlovable (incapable of inspiring love or affection)

Also:

undesirable; unwanted (not wanted)

hostile (characterized by enmity or ill will)

offensive (unpleasant or disgusting especially to the senses)

Antonym:

lovable (having characteristics that attract love or affection)

Derivation:

hatefulness (the quality of being hateful)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Characterized by malice

Synonyms:

hateful; mean

Context example:

in a mean mood

Similar:

awful; nasty (offensive or even (of persons) malicious)

Derivation:

hatefulness (the quality of being hateful)

 Context examples 

"Everybody is so hateful, I'll ask Laurie to go skating. He is always kind and jolly, and will put me to rights, I know," said Jo to herself, and off she went.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

The laughter of men was a hateful thing.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

Remember that I have power; you believe yourself miserable, but I can make you so wretched that the light of day will be hateful to you.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

“I assure you it is just as hateful to me to fail in a case as it can be to you to blunder over a commission.”

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The subject became hateful to me—I would not speak of it.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I was hateful in my own eyes.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Say only that I am not hateful to you—that on some happier day I may hear kinder words from you.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

“I cannot say that I care what becomes of Hyde; I am quite done with him. I was thinking of my own character, which this hateful business has rather exposed.”

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

But the most hateful sight of all, was the lice crawling on their clothes.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

I thought that he was perfectly hateful—and I was sure that Cyril would not wish me to know such a person.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)