plug-ugly

English

Pronunciation

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Adjective

plug-ugly (not comparable)

1. (slang) Very ugly.

   Synonym: (North America) butt-ugly

Noun

plug-ugly (plural plug-uglies)

1. (slang) An ugly person.
   • 1929, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, When the World Screamed‎^[1]:

     The article was a highly-coloured and exaggerated account of the adventure of Roy Perkins, 'our experienced war correspondent' and it contained such purple passages as 'this hirsute bully of Enmore Gardens,' 'a compound guarded by barbed wire, plug-uglies, and bloodhounds,' and finally, 'I was dragged from the edge of the Anglo-Australian tunnel by two ruffians[.]'

   • 1941 October, C. Hamilton Ellis, Charles E. Lee, “The Welsh Highland Railway—III”, in Railway Magazine, page 435:

     Thus passed the last of the North Wales Narrow Gauge locomotives, and one of the few American-built locomotives to survive in Great Britain; the sadly cropped though once elegant Russell, and the unembellished yet useful Yankee plug-ugly.

2. (US, historical) A member of an American nativist street gang that operated in the west side of Baltimore, Maryland, from 1854 to 1865.
3. (US, slang, dated) A violent thug; a goon.

Related terms

• pug-ugly

See also

• Plug Uglies, a 19th-century street gang in Baltimore, Maryland

References

• “plug-ugly”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.