mistrustful

English

Etymology

From mistrust +‎ -ful.

Adjective

mistrustful (comparative more mistrustful, superlative most mistrustful)

1. Having mistrust, lacking trust (in someone or something).
   • c. 1591–1592 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Third Part of Henry the Sixt, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene ii]:

     […] I hold it cowardice
     To rest mistrustful where a noble heart
     Hath pawn’d an open hand in sign of love;

   • 1910, Ian Hay, The Right Stuff‎^[1], Boston: Houghton Mifflin, Book Two, Chapter Sixteen, p. 284:

     In the passage I met the nurse. She greeted me with a little smile; but I was mistrustful of professional cheerfulness that night.

2. Expressing or showing a lack of trust.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto XII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, page 579:

     He lookt askew with his mistrustfull eyes,
     And nycely trode, as thornes lay in his way

   • 1847 October 16, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], chapter X, in Jane Eyre. An Autobiography. […], volume I, London: Smith, Elder, and Co., […], →OCLC, page 160:

     At last, having held a document before her glasses for nearly five minutes, she presented it across the counter; accompanying the act by another inquisitive and mistrustful glance—it was for J. E.

   • 1908 October, Kenneth Grahame, chapter 2, in The Wind in the Willows, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC:

     He led the way to the stable-yard accordingly, the Rat following with a most mistrustful expression […]

3. Having a suspicion, imagining or supposing (that something undesirable is the case).
   • 1859, Charles Dickens, “Book 2, Chapter 15”, in A Tale of Two Cities, London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC:

     The mender of roads was now coming to himself, and was mistrustful of having made a mistake in his late demonstrations; but no.

4. (obsolete) Causing mistrust, suspicions, or forebodings.
   • 1582, Richard Stanihurst, transl., Thee First Foure Bookes of Virgil his Aeneis‎^[2], Leiden: John Pates, Book 3, p. 60:

     Vp we gad, owt spredding oure sayls and make to the seaward:
     Al creeks mistrustful with Greekish countrye refusing.

   • 1593, [William Shakespeare], Venus and Adonis, London: […] Richard Field, […], →OCLC‎^[3]:

     […] stonish’d as night-wanderers often are,
     Their light blown out in some mistrustful wood,
     Even so confounded in the dark she lay,
     Having lost the fair discovery of her way.

Synonyms

• (having mistrust): distrustful, suspicious, untrusting, wary

Derived terms

• mistrustfully (adv)
• mistrustfulness (n)

References

• “mistrustful”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.