mistrustful

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English

Etymology

From mistrust +‎ -ful.

Pronunciation

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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 Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, :
      [] 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, 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, 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:
      [] 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.

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