mistrustful

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English[edit]

Etymology[edit]

mistrust +‎ -ful

Adjective[edit]

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.
  3. Having a suspicion, imagining or supposing (that something undesirable is the case).
  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; Shakespeare’s Venus & Adonis: [][3], 4th edition, London: J[oseph] M[alaby] Dent and Co. [], 1896, →OCLC:
      [] 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.
      The spelling has been modernized.

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