unkind
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: ipa: /ʌnˈkaɪnd/
rhymes: -aɪnd
Forms: form: unkinder
form: more unkind
form: unkindest
form: most unkind
Etymology: From Middle English unkind; equivalent to un- + kind.
Senses: examples: text: Judge, O you gods, how dearly Caesar loved him!
This was the most unkindest cut of all;
For when the noble Caesar saw him stab,
Ingratitude, more strong than traitors’ arms,
Quite vanquish’d him: then burst his mighty heart;
ref: 1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Iulius Cæsar”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene ii]:
text: Yet was it ne’er my Fate, from thee to find
A Deed ungentle, or a Word unkind:
When others curst the Auth’ress of their Woe,
Thy Pity check’d my Sorrows in their Flow:
ref: 1715–1720, Homer, translated by Alexander Pope, “Book 24”, in The Iliad of Homer, volume (please specify |volume=I to VI), London: […] W[illiam] Bowyer, for Bernard Lintott […], →OCLC, page 189, lines 968-971:
text: Nobody meant to be unkind, but nobody put themselves out of their way to secure her comfort.
ref: 1814 May 9, [Jane Austen], chapter II, in Mansfield Park: […], volume I, London: […] [George Sidney] for T[homas] Egerton, […], →OCLC, page 24:
text: Despite the bursitis, Dewey got in a good round of golf, though his cautious game inspired a reporter to make one of the week′s unkindest remarks: “He plays golf like he plays politics — straight down the middle, and short.”
ref: 1950 July 3, “Politicians Without Politics”, in Life, page 16:
text: We had to learn that to refuse such gifts, which represented serious sacrifice, was more unkind than to accept them.
ref: 1974, Laurence William Wylie, Village in the Vaucluse, 3rd edition, page 175:
text: In the strictness with which he holds this view he belongs in the company of the novelists I have cited, except that he is unkinder and less charitable than they are.
ref: 2000, Edward W. Said, “On Lost Causes”, in Reflections on Exile and Other Essays, page 540:
text: As a kid, I suffered the slings and arrows that most of us with such foreign names grow up with. I was called Pollock, Pockrock and worse. One unkind kid on the playground, perhaps sensing some need for attention, labeled me Peacock.
ref: 2014 August 20, Mark Potok, “What’s in a Name?”, in Southern Poverty Law Center:
glosses: Lacking kindness, sympathy, benevolence, gratitude, or similar; cruel, harsh or unjust; ungrateful.
examples: text: […] A Feauer is an vnkinde heate, that commeth out of the heart, and passeth into all the members of the bodye, and grieueth the working of the bodye.
ref: 1582, Stephen Batman, transl., Batman vppon Bartholome His Booke De Proprietatibus Rerum, London, Book 7, Chapter 33:
text: Crowes will not feed their yong til 9. daies old,
Because their vnkind colour makes them doubt
Them to be theirs;
ref: 1617, John Davies, Wits Bedlam, London, Epigram 116:
glosses: Not kind; contrary to nature or type; unnatural.
examples: text: O, had thy mother borne so hard a mind,
She had not brought forth thee, but died unkind.
ref: 1593, [William Shakespeare], Venus and Adonis, London: […] Richard Field, […], →OCLC:
glosses: Having no race or kindred; childless.
Derived terms: unkindest cut
Related terms: unkindly
unkindness