unliken

English

Etymology

From Middle English unliknen, equivalent to un- +‎ liken.

Verb

unliken (third-person singular simple present unlikens, present participle unlikening, simple past and past participle unlikened)

1. (transitive) To make unlike; to dissimilate.
   • 1948, Blackwood's Magazine, volume 264, page 178:

     "To unliken them would make nonsense of any poem," I said.

   • 1996, Gustave Flaubert, Flaubert in Egypt, page 151:

     At some time, in a similar mood, Flaubert made an undated entry on the last page of one of his travel notebooks, likening and unlikening his accesses of depression to the midsummer rising of the Nile: 'Oh Nile!'

   • 2023, Leilani Taneus-Miller, Brown Girl:

     At which point, my mind abandons the count, rationalising that there are countless more unlikening bricks in this building.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Wyclif to this entry?)

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “unliken”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)

Anagrams

• nunlike