The Lexicon of FeelingAll wordsInteractive app

Loathing

[ˈloʊðɪŋ] · LOH-thing · English · noun
negativeintensity: highdisgustanger

Intense disgust fused with hatred.

Definition

Intense disgust fused with hatred — a settled, simmering aversion that shades into hate.

Connotation & usage

High-intensity disgust fused with hostility — the term that most clearly shades from disgust into active hate. More sustained, personal, and emotionally charged than the visceral disgust or the sudden revulsion: a settled animosity rather than a momentary turn of the stomach. You can loathe a person, a rival, or yourself (note self-loathing). Less morally framed than abhorrence (which condemns something as evil) but stronger in hostility.

Related words

Etymology

A verbal noun from loathe (late 14c.), from Old English laðian, from lað “hated; hateful” (the root of loath). The literal Germanic sense is “hateful, loathsome.”

How it has changed

The noun has meant “abhorrence / hatred” consistently since the late 14c. A historical feature of the verb is the now-obsolete impersonal construction (“it loathes me” = “I am disgusted”), a grammatical rather than semantic change. No reliable recent-generation shift.

Sources

Explore “Loathing” in the interactive dictionary →
From The Lexicon of Feeling — a carefully sourced dictionary & thesaurus of emotions across 60 languages. Definitions are verified against the cited sources; emotion-family, valence, and intensity tags are editorial. This is a learning tool for emotional vocabulary, not therapy or a substitute for professional care. © 2026 The Lexicon of Feeling.