Awful means extremely bad or unpleasant. When something is awful, it's worse than just bad: it's so terrible that it makes you feel upset, disgusted, or dismayed. An awful smell might make you hold your nose and back away. An awful movie is so boring or poorly made that you wish you'd never watched it. Awful weather means conditions so miserable that you don't want to go outside.

You might hear someone say “an awful lot,” which oddly means a very large amount: “There's an awful lot of homework tonight.” Here, awful works as an intensifier, like saying “a huge amount” without meaning it literally.

When something goes wrong, people might say “How awful!” to express sympathy or dismay. If your friend tells you their pet is sick, you might respond, “Oh, that's awful!” to show you understand how bad they feel.