How to Use awful in a Sentence

awful

adjective
  • They heard the most awful sounds.
  • That's an awful thing to say.
  • The mountains have an awful majesty.
  • That joke is just awful.
  • Who painted the house that awful color?
  • He has some awful disease.
  • Awful things began to happen.
  • Yes, the world is an awful place.
    — Austin Perry Outkick, FOXNews.com, 29 Apr. 2026
  • Maye was awful and played scared.
    — Nick Canepa, San Diego Union-Tribune, 15 Feb. 2026
  • The moon, quite frankly, is an awful place.
    — Robin George Andrews, Scientific American, 19 May 2026
  • This last smell was, in short, awful.
    — Rj MacKenzie, Popular Science, 11 June 2026
  • This isn’t awful, but not quite as good as hoped.
    — Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 19 Dec. 2025
  • That sounds, that, sounds awful.
    — Outside Online, 17 Sep. 2025
  • That’s an awful lot of chest X-rays.
    — Tom Hawking, Popular Science, 25 June 2026
  • But the dirty secret is most of them are awful.
    — Brian Tallerico, Vulture, 11 May 2026
  • The past few months have been nothing short of awful.
    — Jeanne Phillips, Dallas Morning News, 26 Jan. 2026
  • Harden was awful in the first two games.
    — Jason Lloyd, New York Times, 14 May 2026
  • How awful to be at anyone’s school ball but your own.
    — Rachel Raposas, PEOPLE, 7 Nov. 2025
  • And not this awful thing that happens again.
    — Jackie Strause, HollywoodReporter, 18 Feb. 2026
  • The defense was awful in the first half.
    — Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 5 Sep. 2025
  • But talk about some awful timing, my word.
    — Shamira Ibrahim, Vulture, 20 Oct. 2025
  • There’s an awful lot of trucks here already.
    — Don Stacom, Hartford Courant, 15 June 2026
  • And the world, while scary and sometimes awful, is still here.
    — oregonlive, 5 Apr. 2023
  • Nine home runs from a DH is awful.
    — Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 26 Mar. 2026
  • Finn's arc was awful, and that goes back to how bad the writing was.
    — Zach Dean Outkick, FOXNews.com, 8 May 2026
  • But the regime still had its choice of tactics, and some of those were awful.
    — Eliot A. Cohen, The Atlantic, 23 Mar. 2026
  • But yes, overall, this is awful.
    — Paul Tassi, Forbes.com, 22 Aug. 2025
  • The defense was awful in the first half against the Colts.
    — Troy Renck, Denver Post, 22 Sep. 2025
  • But would bringing him back be the most awful idea ever?
    — Josh Yohe, New York Times, 11 June 2026
  • Both teams were mostly awful on offense in the first half.
    — Greg Beacham, Twin Cities, 11 Mar. 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'awful.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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