distasteful

• distastefull (archaic)

From distaste +‎ -ful or dis- +‎ tasteful.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /dɪsˈteɪstfəɫ/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -eɪstfəl

distasteful (comparative more distasteful, superlative most distasteful)

1. Having a bad or foul taste.

   Near-synonym: unpalatable

   The food had very distasteful flavour.

2. (figuratively) Unpleasant.

   Near-synonym: unpalatable

   Scrubbing the floors was a distasteful duty to perform.

   • 1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XXIV, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC, pages 198–199:

     All this was extraordinarily distasteful to Churchill. It was ugly, gross. […] Never before had he felt such repulsion when the vicar displayed his characteristic bluntness or coarseness of speech. In the present connection—or rather as a transition from the subject that had started their conversation—such talk had been distressingly out of place.

3. Offensive.

   distasteful language

   • 1987 December 27, Kenneth J. Trask, “Stop Crossing Your Legs, Governor”, in Gay Community News, volume 15, number 24, page 5:

     AIDS is primarily a sexually transmitted disease and to not focus on the documented routes of transmission — however distasteful they may be to some legislators — is an ineffective and bigoted means of education by any standards.

• pleasant, pleasing