How to Use appalling in a Sentence

appalling

adjective
  • We drove by an appalling accident on the highway.
  • City officials knew about this appalling trade, but did little to stop it.
    Gary Kamiya, San Francisco Chronicle, 5 Jan. 2018
  • This adds another turn of the screw to the problem of appalling opinions.
    Joshua Rothman, The New Yorker, 15 Oct. 2024
  • This was an appalling day in the United States Congress.
    Charles P. Pierce, Esquire, 20 Dec. 2017
  • Liberal critics wouldn’t be so quick to snicker at the appalling I, Tonya, then.
    Kyle Smith, National Review, 11 Jan. 2018
  • The middle child, a 5-year-old girl, is allowed to choose her own outfits for gatherings and school, with appalling results.
    Abby, Houston Chronicle, 29 Dec. 2017
  • The prisoners had to survive under cruel, appalling conditions.
    Theodore Kupfer, National Review, 11 Jan. 2018
  • Change is also afoot in Egypt, the region’s entertainment capital and home to an appalling history of anti-Semitism on stage and screen.
    Joseph Braude, WSJ, 15 Dec. 2017
  • At 33, Plaza is becoming her own comic genre — outrageous and funny, sometimes appalling and disturbing.
    Mick Lasalle, San Francisco Chronicle, 29 Dec. 2017
  • That’s an appalling representation of women for a music festival in 2018.
    Rachel George, Billboard, 23 Jan. 2018
  • Murphy shapes his horrible narrative through vile and appalling character portrayals of Lyle and of me and disheartening slander.
    Lester Fabian Brathwaite, EW.com, 20 Oct. 2024
  • The actions of these young people, and of the elites who run the schools, are more than appalling.
    Matthew Continetti, National Review, 13 Oct. 2023
  • The death of an enemy is not less appalling than the death of a friend.
    Scott Roxborough, The Hollywood Reporter, 5 Mar. 2023
  • The things that came out of my mouth are honestly just appalling.
    Tommy McArdle, Peoplemag, 18 Aug. 2022
  • The creators made the destruction of the cruise ship by nanofibers appalling and gruesome.
    Anne Thompson, IndieWire, 9 Aug. 2024
  • And some hypocrisies are appalling and should be strongly called out and condemned.
    Stephanie Dillon, Rolling Stone, 5 Apr. 2024
  • All kinds of various things around the gay stuff is appalling.
    Recode Staff, Recode, 22 Mar. 2018
  • But as the sun rises, the appalling state of the beach becomes visible.
    Nina Burleigh, Smithsonian Magazine, 4 Jan. 2024
  • The weather in England right now is appalling, and the country is in the grip of a cost-of-living crisis.
    Ed Caesar, The New Yorker, 21 Nov. 2022
  • The destruction and loss of human life are appalling – from both sides of the conflict.
    Daniel Markind, Forbes, 19 May 2021
  • That’s a galling turn of events, made even more appalling by footage of the actual desert skirmish that cost the men their lives.
    Nick Schager, Rolling Stone, 10 Nov. 2021
  • What a galling next chapter that would be in this appalling story.
    David Von Drehle, Twin Cities, 19 June 2019
  • The list of money-making rip-offs that the scammer can partake in is lengthy and appalling.
    Lance Eliot, Forbes, 3 Jan. 2023
  • So there are a lot of really appalling contrasts that are hard to get my head around.
    Jacqueline Landry, The Atlantic, 15 Apr. 2020
  • My thoughts and prayers are with President Trump and the victims of this appalling attack.
    Nik Popli, TIME, 14 July 2024
  • The appalling actions taken by the few bad actors who made the news for all the wrong reasons in the past few years should not reflect on the rest of us.
    Dp Opinion, The Denver Post, 30 May 2024
  • What if…he was sunk in that dark flood of unstoppable harm, somehow adding to its appalling weight, lost in it….
    Hermione Lee, The New York Review of Books, 6 Oct. 2020
  • For starters, a large part of the Napoleonic myth rests on the idea that the emperor lived in appalling conditions on the island.
    Julia Buckley, CNN, 5 May 2021
  • One or two people in Netanyahu’s cabinet have said the most appalling things.
    Isaac Chotiner, The New Yorker, 14 Oct. 2024
  • Many of them were underwhelming and, in some cases, appalling.
    Andrew Webster, The Verge, 12 Oct. 2024

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

Last Updated: