butt-ugly wallpaper
- noun
- Offensive
:
papel pintado espantoso
- That butt-ugly wallpaper totally ruined the vibe of the whole house.
Examples
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I had to repaint the walls to cover up the old butt-ugly wallpaper.
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Her family couldn't believe she chose butt-ugly wallpaper for the living room.
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This room has such butt-ugly wallpaper!
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I can't believe they chose butt-ugly wallpaper for the hall.
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Her family couldn't believe she chose butt-ugly wallpaper for the living room.
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I had to repaint the walls to cover up the old butt-ugly wallpaper.
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That butt-ugly wallpaper totally ruined the vibe of the whole house.
Synonyms
21
5.5
A building or object that looks very ugly in a place
Surface Forms
Morphology
butt-ugly + wallpaper
The overall meaning 'extremely unattractive' is closely related to the known adjective 'ugly', and a learner who knows 'butt' and 'ugly' can probably infer that the compound is an emphatic/slang way of saying very ugly. However, the use of 'butt' as an intensifier is informal and idiomatic rather than a regular compositional pattern, so the relation is only partly predictable without prior exposure.
Etymology
Butt-ugly wallpaper comes from slang where butt is a crude, strong word put before ugly. One popular story says 'butt' was used to mean 'completely', so the phrase creates the image of wallpaper so ugly you want to look away, and that's why it means 'extremely unattractive'.