LOATHSOME

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does loathsome mean? 

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

1. causing or able to cause nausea

2. highly offensive; arousing aversion or disgust

  Familiarity information: LOATHSOME used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• LOATHSOME (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Causing or able to cause nausea

Synonyms:

loathsome; nauseating; nauseous; noisome; offensive; queasy; sickening; vile

Context example:

a sickening stench

Similar:

unwholesome (detrimental to physical or moral well-being)

Derivation:

loathsomeness (the quality of being disgusting to the senses or emotions)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Highly offensive; arousing aversion or disgust

Synonyms:

disgustful; disgusting; distasteful; foul; loathly; loathsome; repellant; repellent; repelling; revolting; skanky; wicked; yucky

Context example:

a wicked stench

Similar:

offensive (unpleasant or disgusting especially to the senses)

Derivation:

loathsomeness (the quality of being disgusting to the senses or emotions)

 Context examples 

An instant later, with a scratching, rattling sound, a most horrible and loathsome creature appeared from below and perched itself upon the side of the case.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

And so I. To crawl is piggish; but to not crawl, to be as the clod and rock, is loathsome to contemplate.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

After the involuntary shrinking consequent on the first nauseous whiff, we one and all set about our work as though that loathsome place were a garden of roses.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

Never did I behold a vision so horrible as his face, of such loathsome yet appalling hideousness.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

In an instant his strange headgear began to move, and there reared itself from among his hair the squat diamond-shaped head and puffed neck of a loathsome serpent.

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

Her husband developed some hateful qualities; or shall we say that he contracted some loathsome disease, and became a leper or an imbecile?

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

Had it been a well wolf, it would not have mattered so much to the man; but the thought of going to feed the maw of that loathsome and all but dead thing was repugnant to him.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

He could eat anything, no matter how loathsome or indigestible; and, once eaten, the juices of his stomach extracted the last least particle of nutriment; and his blood carried it to the farthest reaches of his body, building it into the toughest and stoutest of tissues.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

They would sometimes alight upon my victuals, and leave their loathsome excrement, or spawn behind, which to me was very visible, though not to the natives of that country, whose large optics were not so acute as mine, in viewing smaller objects.

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

I crouched low among the bushes, for I knew from past experience that with a single cry the creature could bring a hundred of its loathsome mates about my ears.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)