as in ugly
unpleasant to look at
along with thousands of other people, we entered our beloved pooch in a contest to find the homeliest dog in the country
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Recent Examples of homely
Conjure the homely, heart-warming elements of the season and take inspiration from nature with Taupe 03 Soho Roc House by Lick.
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Emily Williams, Better Homes & Gardens, 12 Aug. 2025
The Athletic’s score: 161 Auckland City’s homely Kiwitea Street stadium (Phil Walter/Getty Images)
31.
—Tim Spiers, New York Times, 11 June 2025
Whether that is fair or not, the move was certainly a long way from the early-career Meghan who raged against the homely image of women in the kitchen of the Ivory Clear commercial.
—Jack Royston, MSNBC Newsweek, 25 May 2025
Ford’s shrewd boss, Robert McNamara, was ready to kill the nameplate altogether, facing another homely redesign approved for 1961.
—Raphael Orlove, Robb Report, 27 Feb. 2025
See All Example Sentences for homely
Recent Examples of Synonyms for homely
Adjective
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Not because the moms themselves are toxic people, but because the dynamic shifts into an ugly place with mean-girl behavior.—
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Many quite authentic Natives were targeted for banishment, and the ugly infighting their work inspired was covered widely—by the standards of Indian affairs—in the American media, which saw the battles as part of the larger identity wars raging across the nation in the new millennium.—
Adjective
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Smears on non-sensor areas of the tiara are like bug debris on your hood, aesthetically unpleasing but not harmful.—
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His side's inability to finish off the game against Burnley on the other hand was very unpleasing.—
Adjective
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Such jars of moldy fruit were probably fairly hideous to consume.—
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The Rodents of Unusual Size that attack Westley in a swamp work because they are played by small men in rodent suits, rather than coolly conjured from pixels; their deliberate artifice is the thrill, and Reiner provided the voice for their hideous snorts.—
Adjective
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Those artists never stopped creating scenes that captured the vibrancy—and sometimes the more grotesque side too—of places that remain world capitals today.—
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The grotesque charade didn’t seem to belong to this world.—
Cite this Entry
“Homely.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/homely. Accessed 20 Jan. 2026.
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