1. hateful 2. extremely inferior; very bad
This word appeared in a review of a book on T. S. Eliot in the New Criterion: “I heard Craig Raine interviewed on the radio about this book. Didn’t he feel, he was asked, that his often abrasive dismissals of fellow critics (“execrable,” “stupid”) lowered the standards of academic writing?”.
That word jumped out at me last night, as I lay in bed reading “The History of Jazz” by Ted Gioia. Of groundbreaking pianist Bud Powell, Gioia says: “At its worst, Powell’s playing in his later days could be execrable…His early work had been distinguished by a suppleness and gripping tension; his later work seemed clouded by malaise.” Thanks to “Word of the Day,” I knew exactly what Gioia meant!