| / English Dictionary |
UNGRACIOUS
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Lacking social graces
Synonyms:
discourteous; ungracious
Classified under:
Similar:
impolite (not polite)
Derivation:
ungraciousness (an offensive lack of good manners)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Lacking charm and good taste
Example:
ungracious behavior
Classified under:
Similar:
churlish (rude and boorish)
graceless (lacking graciousness)
Also:
unrefined ((used of persons and their behavior) not refined; uncouth)
Antonym:
gracious (characterized by charm, good taste, and generosity of spirit)
Context examples:
She had been often remiss, her conscience told her so; remiss, perhaps, more in thought than fact; scornful, ungracious.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
So acutely did Mrs. Dashwood feel this ungracious behaviour, and so earnestly did she despise her daughter-in-law for it, that, on the arrival of the latter, she would have quitted the house for ever, had not the entreaty of her eldest girl induced her first to reflect on the propriety of going, and her own tender love for all her three children determined her afterwards to stay, and for their sakes avoid a breach with their brother.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
She was an interesting person, this stern Australian nurse—taciturn, suspicious, ungracious, it took some time before Holmes’s pleasant manner and frank acceptance of all that she said thawed her into a corresponding amiability.
(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Her training warned her of peril and of wrong, subtle, mysterious, luring; while her instincts rang clarion-voiced through her being, impelling her to hurdle caste and place and gain to this traveller from another world, to this uncouth young fellow with lacerated hands and a line of raw red caused by the unaccustomed linen at his throat, who, all too evidently, was soiled and tainted by ungracious existence.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
Thursday was to be the wedding day, and on Wednesday Miss Lucas paid her farewell visit; and when she rose to take leave, Elizabeth, ashamed of her mother's ungracious and reluctant good wishes, and sincerely affected herself, accompanied her out of the room.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
Apologies for her seemingly ungracious silence in their first reception, and the warmest expressions of the gratitude she was always feeling towards herself and Mr. Weston, must necessarily open the cause; but when these effusions were put by, they had talked a good deal of the present and of the future state of the engagement.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
Mrs. Ferrars at first reasonably endeavoured to dissuade him from marrying Miss Dashwood, by every argument in her power;—told him, that in Miss Morton he would have a woman of higher rank and larger fortune;—and enforced the assertion, by observing that Miss Morton was the daughter of a nobleman with thirty thousand pounds, while Miss Dashwood was only the daughter of a private gentleman with no more than THREE; but when she found that, though perfectly admitting the truth of her representation, he was by no means inclined to be guided by it, she judged it wisest, from the experience of the past, to submit—and therefore, after such an ungracious delay as she owed to her own dignity, and as served to prevent every suspicion of good-will, she issued her decree of consent to the marriage of Edward and Elinor.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
She had to destroy all the hopes which she had been so industriously feeding—to appear in the ungracious character of the one preferred—and acknowledge herself grossly mistaken and mis-judging in all her ideas on one subject, all her observations, all her convictions, all her prophecies for the last six weeks.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
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