Meaning

Lacking kindness, sympathy, benevolence, gratitude, or similar; cruel, harsh or unjust; ungrateful..

Definitions by Sense

1. Lacking kindness, sympathy, benevolence, gratitude, or similar; cruel, harsh or unjust; ungrateful.
2. (obsolete) Not kind; contrary to nature or type; unnatural.
3. (obsolete) Having no race or kindred; childless.

Example Sentences

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;

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:

Nobody meant to be unkind, but nobody put themselves out of their way to secure her comfort.

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.”

Before the day I met you, life was so unkind / But you're the key to my peace of mind

We had to learn that to refuse such gifts, which represented serious sacrifice, was more unkind than to accept them.

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.

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.

Word Forms

• unkinder
• more unkind
• unkindest
• most unkind

Synonyms for unkind

Antonyms for unkind

Related Words

When Should You Use Unkind?

Use unkind when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.

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