mistrustful
Appearance
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Pronunciation
[edit]Adjective
[edit]mistrustful (comparative more mistrustful, superlative most mistrustful)
- Having mistrust, lacking trust (in someone or something).
- c. 1591–1592 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Third Part of Henry the Sixt, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene ii]:
- […] I hold it cowardice
To rest mistrustful where a noble heart
Hath pawn’d an open hand in sign of love;
- Expressing or showing a lack of trust.
- 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto XII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, page 579:
- He lookt askew with his mistrustfull eyes,
And nycely trode, as thornes lay in his way
- 1847 October 16, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], chapter X, in Jane Eyre. An Autobiography. […], volume I, London: Smith, Elder, and Co., […], →OCLC, page 160:
- At last, having held a document before her glasses for nearly five minutes, she presented it across the counter; accompanying the act by another inquisitive and mistrustful glance—it was for J. E.
- 1908 October, Kenneth Grahame, chapter 2, in The Wind in the Willows, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC:
- He led the way to the stable-yard accordingly, the Rat following with a most mistrustful expression […]
- Having a suspicion, imagining or supposing (that something undesirable is the case).
- 1859, Charles Dickens, “Book 2, Chapter 15”, in A Tale of Two Cities, London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC:
- The mender of roads was now coming to himself, and was mistrustful of having made a mistake in his late demonstrations; but no.
- (obsolete) Causing mistrust, suspicions, or forebodings.
- 1582, Richard Stanihurst, transl., Thee First Foure Bookes of Virgil his Aeneis[2], Leiden: John Pates, Book 3, p. 60:
- Vp we gad, owt spredding oure sayls and make to the seaward:
Al creeks mistrustful with Greekish countrye refusing.
- 1593, [William Shakespeare], Venus and Adonis, London: […] Richard Field, […], →OCLC[3]:
- […] stonish’d as night-wanderers often are,
Their light blown out in some mistrustful wood,
Even so confounded in the dark she lay,
Having lost the fair discovery of her way.
Synonyms
[edit]- (having mistrust): distrustful, suspicious, untrusting, wary
Derived terms
[edit]- mistrustfully (adv)
- mistrustfulness (n)
References
[edit]- “mistrustful”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.