Disgusting

How to spell disgusting

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce disgusting

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does disgusting mean?

1. adjectiveCausing a strong feeling of revulsion or strong disapproval.

Disgusting in a sentence

• The kitchen was left in a disgusting state after the party.

• The customers complained that the smell from the drains was disgusting.

Where does disgusting come from?

Language of origin: French

The word grows from the verb 'disgust', which English took from the Old French desgouster in the late 1500s, meaning 'to put off the taste, to spoil an appetite'. That French verb was built from the prefix des- (expressing reversal or removal) and the Latin noun gustus, which literally meant 'a taste' or 'the act of tasting'. So the original idea was strongly physical: something that ruined your taste for food, that turned the stomach. Over time the sense broadened from the literal sense of taste to any feeling of strong revulsion, whether moral, visual, or emotional, and the participle 'disgusting' settled in as the everyday adjective for anything that provokes that reaction. The same Latin gustus root survives in the pleasant word 'gusto', meaning hearty enjoyment, which makes a neat memory hook: the hidden 'gust' in the middle is why the spelling is not 'disgousting' or 'desgusting'.

How the word is built

• dis- (reversal, away)
• gust (taste, from Latin gustus)
• -ing (present-participle/adjective suffix)