abortion n.
an all-purpose derog. term for a person, an object or an enterprise.
![[UK]](/static/img/flags/uk.png "United Kingdom") | Lame Lover in Works (1799) II 53: Your wounded feelings, turn’d a diff’rent way, / Will justly damn — th’ abortion of a play. | |
| Notebooks 2 Nov. n.p.: Poor Lamb! Poor England where such a despicable abortion is named genius! | |
| Peter Simple (1911) 73: D--n you, you have no excuse, so take that – and that – you yelping, half-starved abortion. | |
![[US]](/static/img/flags/us.png "United States") | Career of Puffer Hopkins 137: The Puncheon! How in the name of Heaven could any one patronize that miserable abortion! | |
![[Aus]](/static/img/flags/aus.png "Australia") | Cornwall Chron. (Launceston, Tas.) 29 Oct. 2/6: The small beer abortion can fight [...] even without the assistance of the ‘tall Irish’ bully and the ‘Life Defender’. | |
| Bell’s Life in Sydney 28 Mar. 3/2: If there could ever have existed any doubt as to this wretched abortion of humanity being debased to stoop to anything, such is now wholly removed. | |
| Twice Round the Clock 348: The very thought of the picture goes far towards making us forgive the painter for his asinine ‘Sir Isumbrasse,’ or whatever the abortion was called. | |
![[Ire]](/static/img/flags/ire.png "Ireland") | Penny Dispatch 28 Nov. 4/4: The Abortion. The Times continues to show the abortiveness of the Napoleonic scheme. | |
| Irishman 15 Aug. 8/2: The past Session will be known as the Session of Abortions [...] We cannot but warn the people that these gentlemen, whilst laboyuring with excellent intention, as yet gained nothing. | |
| Bulletin (Sydney) 5 Mar. 9/4: The dwarf now being exhibited is an abortion. It is a sickening sight. | |
![[NZ]](/static/img/flags/nz.png "New Zealand") | Observer and Freelance (Wellington) 5 Sept. 3/3: The tottering sea wall on the reclamation, the Hobson-street abortion of a wharf. | |
| ‘To Whom This May Come’, in Isaac Asimov presents the Best Science Fiction of the 19th Century (1981) 225: His voice was the most pitiable abortion of a voice I had ever heard. | |
| (con. WW1) Patrol 22: ‘You wretched, half-sized, measle-brained little abortion!’. | |
| Haunch Paunch and Jowl 206: They’ll hire gunmen to fight their own gunmen. That’s the cheapest thing they got to sell, human abortions – what am I talking about? – monkey abortions. | |
| We Were the Rats 177: An abortion of a thing. | |
| Loving (1978) 193: I never guessed that bloodless abortion ’ad the guts. | |
| Harder They Fall (1971) 161: Know what this house cost me [...] six thousand dollars a year for this unspeakable abortion. | |
| Gidget (2001) 18: What about this abortion? | |
| et al. CUSS 69: Abortion An ugly person, female. A misfortune. | |
| Great Santini (1977) 481: This muscle-bound abortion got me to Ravenel from the West Coast? | |
| Dict. of Invective (1991) 17: abortion. A failure. | |
![[Scot]](/static/img/flags/sco.png "Scotland") | Trainspotting 211: This fucking walking abortion says that his killers will be ruthlessly hunted down. | |
| Permanent Midnight 68: [of bad film scripts] Abortions could pile up for only so long. | |
| (con. 1973) Johnny Porno 103: Replace the abortion the war’s been [...] with something supposed to protect our morality. |