Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a fit of depression or bad temper.

1846		Swell’s Night Guide 77: I know as how I’ve got the uglies.
1852		Kendal Mercury 17 Apr. 6/1: The lord knows they’re bad enough in the uglies.
1855		Yokel’s Preceptor 9: It’s no go, I can’t take you, you’d give me the uglies.

2. delirium tremens.

1890–1904		Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.
1933		‘William Juniper’ True Drunkard’s Delight 247: Delerium tremens, or [...] uglies.

3. (S.Afr.) a type of eyeshade worn by women [ugly n. (2)].

1913

C. Pettman Africanderisms 496: Uglies A framework of wire covered with some light material and attached to the front of the bonnet by which the wives and daughters of the ‘Settlers’ secured shade for their eyes and complexions.

4. the state of being unattractive.

1846		Swell’s Night Guide 77: I know as how I’ve got the uglies; but send as I may live, if I didn’t copp’em of you; you are ye ugliest warment I ever did pipe.
1970		(con. 1950s) H. Junker ‘The Fifties’ in Eisen Age of Rock 2 (1970) 102: She would certainly be turned off if he [had] a bad case of the uglies.
1998		(con. 1960s) G. Washington Blood Brothers 82: The next patient looked like he had a bad case of leprosy or elephantitis. Whatever it was, he had a bad case of the deep uglies.

5. nitrogen narcosis, ‘rapture of the deep’.

1974

Petroleum Rev. XXVIII 672/1: Nitrogen narcosis, popularly called ‘raptures of the deep’ but perhaps more accurately described as ‘the uglies’, is the malady caused by nitrogen under pressure, interfering with the normal function of the nervous system .