ABHORRENT

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does abhorrent mean? 

• ABHORRENT (adjective)
  The adjective ABHORRENT has 1 sense:

1. offensive to the mind

  Familiarity information: ABHORRENT used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• ABHORRENT (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Offensive to the mind

Synonyms:

abhorrent; detestable; obscene; repugnant; repulsive

Context example:

the most repulsive character in recent novels

Similar:

offensive (unpleasant or disgusting especially to the senses)

Derivation:

abhor (find repugnant)

abhorrence (hate coupled with disgust)

 Context examples 

He surmised my secret, and has presumed ever since upon the claim which he has upon me, and upon his power of provoking a scandal which would be abhorrent to me.

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

A residence in Turkey was abhorrent to her; her religion and her feelings were alike averse to it.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

There is no indignity so abhorrent to their feelings!

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind.

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

Society is becoming irksome; and as for the amusements in which you were wont to share at Bath, the very idea of them without her is abhorrent.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

His heart was the heavier for the encounter, not only because all bitterness and wrath were abhorrent to his gentle nature, but also because it disturbed him to hear his brother spoken of as though he were a chief of outlaws or the leader of a party against the state.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

To his sombre and cynical spirit all popular applause was always abhorrent, and nothing amused him more at the end of a successful case than to hand over the actual exposure to some orthodox official, and to listen with a mocking smile to the general chorus of misplaced congratulation.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

It was evident that to his intensely aristocratic nature this discussion of his intimate family affairs with a stranger was most abhorrent, and that he feared lest every fresh question would throw a fiercer light into the discreetly shadowed corners of his ducal history.

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