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SINISTER
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Threatening or foreshadowing evil or tragic developments
Example:
the situation became ugly
Synonyms:
baleful; forbidding; menacing; minacious; minatory; ominous; sinister; threatening
Classified under:
Similar:
alarming (frightening because of an awareness of danger)
Sense 2
Meaning:
On or starting from the wearer's left
Example:
bar sinister
Classified under:
Similar:
sinistral (of or on the left)
Domain category:
heraldry (the study and classification of armorial bearings and the tracing of genealogies)
Sense 3
Meaning:
Stemming from evil characteristics or forces; wicked or dishonorable
Example:
the scheme of some sinister intelligence bent on punishing him
Synonyms:
Classified under:
Adjectives
Similar:
evil (morally bad or wrong)
Context examples:
Whether they were always so free from avarice, partialities, or want, that a bribe, or some other sinister view, could have no place among them?
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
“You have already an account to answer for with me,” said Hume, with his sinister sneer, and as he spoke he was swept by the rush of the crowd into my uncle’s very arms.
(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
It seems to me to be a most dark and sinister business.
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
But Mr. Baynes had kept his most sinister exhibit to the last.
(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
There have been further and sinister developments in the investigation at Norwood.
(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
He did not attempt to deny that he had acted as described upon the evening before, but declared that he had no sinister designs, and had simply wished to obtain first-hand information.
(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
He gave me a sidelong glance out of his sinister red eyes, and laughed.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
With his tangle of golden hair, his fierce blue eyes, and his large, well-marked features, he was the most comely man whom Alleyne had ever seen, and yet there was something so sinister and so fell in his expression that child or beast might well have shrunk from him.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Two doors from one corner, on the left hand going east the line was broken by the entry of a court; and just at that point a certain sinister block of building thrust forward its gable on the street.
(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
And as for the vague something—was it a sinister or a sorrowful, a designing or a desponding expression? —that opened upon a careful observer, now and then, in his eye, and closed again before one could fathom the strange depth partially disclosed; that something which used to make me fear and shrink, as if I had been wandering amongst volcanic-looking hills, and had suddenly felt the ground quiver and seen it gape: that something, I, at intervals, beheld still; and with throbbing heart, but not with palsied nerves.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
