"not a pretty sight" meaning in English

See not a pretty sight in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: En-au-not a pretty sight.ogg [Australia]
Head templates: {{en-noun|-}} not a pretty sight (uncountable)
  1. (euphemistic, sometimes humorous) Something visually unappealing, ranging from mildly unattractive to utterly disgusting in appearance. Tags: euphemistic, humorous, sometimes, uncountable Categories (topical): Appearance
    Sense id: en-not_a_pretty_sight-en-noun-VVlwrbp2 Disambiguation of Appearance: 89 11 Categories (other): English euphemisms, English entries with incorrect language header, English entries with language name categories using raw markup, English entries with topic categories using raw markup, English litotes, English negative polarity items, English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 90 10 Disambiguation of English entries with language name categories using raw markup: 92 8 Disambiguation of English entries with topic categories using raw markup: 91 9 Disambiguation of English litotes: 83 17 Disambiguation of English negative polarity items: 86 14 Disambiguation of English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys: 86 14
  2. (idiomatic, by extension) Something disappointing, disquieting, disreputable, or otherwise unworthy of admiration. Tags: broadly, idiomatic, uncountable
    Sense id: en-not_a_pretty_sight-en-noun-v8dRohis

Download JSON data for not a pretty sight meaning in English (4.3kB)

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          "ref": "1890, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, chapter 44, in The Firm of Girdlestone",
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          "ref": "1909, Jack London, chapter 35, in Martin Eden",
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          "ref": "1929 June 23, “Impelled to Passage”, in Time",
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        },
        {
          "ref": "2002, Simon Szreter, “The State of Social Capital”, in Theory and Society, volume 31, number 5, page 597",
          "text": "They showed little remorse in using this power to its full extent, against each other, against smaller producers and against the laboring poor, including strong-arm tactics of no legality. The result was not a pretty sight.",
          "type": "quotation"
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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-30 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (210104c and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.