1 (especially spoken) very bad or unpleasant:
That's an awful colour. * 'They didn't even offer to pay.' 'Oh that's awful.' * It's awful, isn't it? * The weather last summer was awful. * I feel awful about forgetting her birthday. * to look / feel awful (= to look / feel ill) * There's an awful smell in here. * The awful thing is, it was my fault.
2 (especially spoken) used to emphasize sth, especially that there is a large amount or too much of sth:
It's going to cost an awful lot of money. * There's not an awful lot of room. * I feel an awful lot better than I did yesterday. * (BrE) I had an awful job persuading him to come (= it was very difficult).
3 very shocking
SYNTERRIBLE:
the awful horrors of war
awfulness noun [U]:
the sheer awfulness of the situation
adverb (informal, especially AmE) very; extremely:
Clint is awful smart.
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for awful is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is awful a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, awful is tagged as adjective.
Does awful appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — awful appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
