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UNGRATEFUL
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Not feeling or showing gratitude
Example:
How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is / To have a thankless child!
Synonyms:
thankless; ungrateful; unthankful
Classified under:
Similar:
unappreciative (not feeling or expressing gratitude)
Antonym:
grateful (feeling or showing gratitude)
Derivation:
ungratefulness (a lack of gratitude)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Disagreeable
Example:
I will not perform the ungrateful task of comparing cases of failure
Classified under:
Similar:
unpleasant (offensive or disagreeable; causing discomfort or unhappiness)
Context examples:
The Tin Woodman came to her and said: Truly I should be ungrateful if I failed to mourn for the man who gave me my lovely heart.
(The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum)
I am not brutally selfish, blindly unjust, or fiendishly ungrateful.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
The doctor himself is gone dead again you—'ungrateful scamp' was what he said; and the short and the long of the whole story is about here: you can't go back to your own lot, for they won't have you; and without you start a third ship's company all by yourself, which might be lonely, you'll have to jine with Cap'n Silver.
(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
“Perhaps you won't be able to help it. Isn't this ungrateful of you, now?”
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
Sir, I cannot find words to thank you, but you shall not find me ungrateful for what you have done.
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Hang the Rambler! Come down and give me your word that this harum-scarum boy of mine hasn't done anything ungrateful or impertinent.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
“I hope I am not ungrateful, aunt,” said Fanny modestly.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
It is a great change; and though she is amazingly fortunate—such a situation, I suppose, as no young woman before ever met with on first going out—do not think us ungrateful, Miss Woodhouse, for such surprising good fortune—(again dispersing her tears)—but, poor dear soul! if you were to see what a headache she has.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
I must only try in the future to show that I am not ungrateful to God for all His goodness to me in sending to me such a lover, such a husband, and such a friend.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
The kindness, the unceasing kindness of Mrs. Jennings, I had repaid with ungrateful contempt. To the Middletons, to the Palmers, the Steeles, to every common acquaintance even, I had been insolent and unjust; with a heart hardened against their merits, and a temper irritated by their very attention.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
