forbidding
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: ipa: /fɚˈbɪdɪŋ/
ipa: /fəˈbɪdɪŋ/
rhymes: -ɪdɪŋ
Forms: form: more forbidding
form: most forbidding
Etymology: By surface analysis, forbid + -ing.
Senses: examples: text: What cause, cry’d he, can justify our flight,
To tempt the dangers of forbidding night?
ref: 1726, Homer, “Book XV”, in [Alexander Pope], transl., The Odyssey of Homer. […], volume IV, London: […] Bernard Lintot, →OCLC, page 14, lines 57-58:
text: […] he was discovered to be proud, to be above his company, and above being pleased; and not all his large estate in Derbyshire could then save him from having a most forbidding, disagreeable countenance, and being unworthy to be compared with his friend.
ref: 1813 January 27, [Jane Austen], chapter 3, in Pride and Prejudice: […], volume I, London: […] [George Sidney] for T[homas] Egerton, […], →OCLC:
text: With no great disparity between them in point of years, they were, in every other respect, as unlike and far removed from each other as two men could well be. The one was soft-spoken, delicately made, precise, and elegant; the other, a burly square-built man, negligently dressed, rough and abrupt in manner, stern, and, in his present mood, forbidding both in look and speech.
ref: 1841 February–November, Charles Dickens, “Barnaby Rudge. Chapter 12.”, in Master Humphrey’s Clock, volume II, London: Chapman & Hall, […], →OCLC, page 301:
text: The writer of the “blank” letter begins fluently with the date and “Dear Mary,” and then sits and chews his penholder or makes little dots and squares and circles on the blotter—utterly unable to attack the cold, forbidding blankness of that first page.
ref: 1922, Emily Post, chapter 28, in Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics, and at Home, New York: Funk & Wagnalls, published 1923, page 498:
text: As we breasted the first summit, the precipitous mass of the Raven's Rock, towering some 250 ft. above the railway, looked grim and forbidding in the failing light, and distant Ben Wyves was shrouded in mist.
ref: 1951 January, H. A. Vallance, “Kyle of Lochalsh Revisited”, in Railway Magazine, page 14:
text: Its forbidding brick and concrete exterior looms over a vast, windswept brick plaza in a style architectural critics, not without admiration, call “The New Brutalism.”
ref: 1988 January 10, “If You Can’t Fight City Hall, Here’s a Different Idea: Sell It”, in The New York Times:
synonyms: word: bleak
word: frosty
word: grim
word: uninviting
word: cheerless
word: comfortless
word: bleak
word: dark
word: depressing
word: desolate
word: dire
word: disconsolate
word: dismal
word: doleful
word: dolesome
word: drear
word: drearisome
word: dreary
word: dreich
word: forlorn
word: gayless
word: gray
word: gloomsome
word: gloomy
word: grim
word: joyless
word: lack-laughter
word: lugubrious
word: melancholy
word: mirthless
word: miserable
word: no joke
word: saturnine
word: solemn
word: somber
word: sombre
word: spiritless
word: sullen
word: sunless
word: uncheerful
word: uncheery
word: unhappy
word: unmerry
word: wintry
word: woeful
word: callous
word: cold
word: cold-eyed
word: dour
word: flint-hearted
word: forbidding
word: frosty
word: grim
word: hard
word: hard-boiled
word: hardened
word: hardhearted
word: heartless
word: harsh
word: humorless
word: icy
word: iron-hearted
word: insensitive
word: rigorous
word: rockhearted
word: severe
word: stern
word: stonehearted
word: stony
word: stonyhearted
word: strict
word: tough
word: unsympathetic
word: unmoved
antonyms: approachable
inviting
welcoming
glosses: Appearing to be threatening, unfriendly or potentially unpleasant.
Derived terms: forbiddingly
forbiddingness
unforbidding