INHOSPITABLE

Pronunciation (US): (GB):

I. (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Unfavorable to life or growth

Example:

inhospitable mountain areas

Classified under:

Adjectives

Similar:

bare; barren; bleak; desolate; stark (providing no shelter or sustenance)

godforsaken; waste; wild (located in a dismal or remote area; desolate)

hostile; uncongenial; unfriendly (very unfavorable to life or growth)

water-washed (washed or swept with water especially waves of the sea)

windswept (open to or swept by wind)

Antonym:

hospitable (favorable to life and growth)

Derivation:

inhospitableness (the environmental condition in a region that lacks a favorable climate or terrain for life or growth)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Not hospitable

Example:

her greeting was cold and inhospitable

Classified under:

Adjectives

Also:

unfriendly (not disposed to friendship or friendliness)

Antonym:

hospitable (disposed to treat guests and strangers with cordiality and generosity)

Derivation:

inhospitableness (having an unfriendly and inhospitable disposition)

inhospitality (unkind and inconsiderate welcome)

Credits

Context examples:

The pits likely serve as mini-domiciles for microbes, conferring some degree of protection against inhospitable conditions.

(Tales from the crypt: Life after death in a graveyard, National Science Foundation)

This freezing, shadowy world could have a temperature of –170 ℃, making it inhospitable for life as we know it.

(Super-Earth Discovered Around Barnard's Star, ESO)

It was pleasant to see the convolvulus, the passion-flower, and the begonia, all reminding me of home, here among these inhospitable rocks.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Balch suspects that booming coccolithophore populations in the Southern Ocean are depleting the water layer's nutrient supply and altering its chemistry — potentially making the water inhospitable to coccolithophores by the time it reaches the equator.

(Study reveals changing patterns in globally important algae, National Science Foundation)

Although the surface of Mars is cold and inhospitable today, scientists think that a thicker atmosphere enriched in greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and water vapor may have warmed the planet in the past.

(Asteroids, Hydrogen Make Great Recipe for Life on Mars, NASA)

Pine Island Glacier is one of the most inhospitable and remote areas of Antarctica, so to get all the equipment needed to hot-water drill through the ice shelf required a major effort from our collaborators at the U.S. Antarctic Program, said James Smith, a marine geologist with BAS.

(West Antarctica's largest glacier may have started retreating as early as the 1940s, NSF)

Rather an inhospitable question to put to a visitor; but since you ask it, I answer simply to have a little talk with you; I got tired of my mute books and empty rooms.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Although the surface of Mars is inhospitable today, there is clear evidence that in the distant past, the Martian climate allowed liquid water - an essential ingredient for life as we know it - to pool at the surface.