Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Unforgiving |
UnforgivingAdjective1. Unwilling or unable to forgive or show mercy; "a surly unforgiving old woman". 2. Not to be placated or appeased or moved by entreaty;"grim determination"; "grim necessity"; "Russia's final hour, it seemed, approached with inexorable certainty"; "relentless persecution"; "the stern demands of parenthood. 3. Harsh and severe; "I hope I'm not being uncharitable but he really is a bore"; "unjust and uncharitable criticism". Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "unforgiving" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1749. (references) |
Synonyms: UnforgivingSynonyms: grim (adj), inexorable (adj), relentless (adj), stern (adj), unappeasable (adj), uncharitable (adj), unrelenting (adj). (additional references) |
| Antonym: forgiving (adj). (additional references) |
| Context | Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus). |
Revenge | Unforgiving, unrelenting; inexorable, stony-hearted, implacable; relentless, remorseless. |
| Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus. | |
Crosswords: Unforgiving |
| English words defined with "unforgiving": Irremissive ♦ unforgivingly. (references) |
| Specialty definitions using "unforgiving": Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal. (references) |
| Domain | Usage | |
Screenplays | Down in the street, it's unforgiving. (Black Hawk Down; writing credit: Ken Nolan) | |
Movie/TV Titles | The Ethnic Cleansers and the Cleansed: The Unforgiving (1993) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title |
Books | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Author | Quotation |
Richard Brinsley Sheridan | An unforgiving eye, and a damned disinheriting countenance! |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | |
| Subject | Topic | Quote |
Economic History | Uae | Although the UAE's climate and terrain are relatively unforgiving, with a mounting supply of desalinated water, there is an increasingly "technologized" attempt to produce more vegetables and fruits for the local market. (references) |
Syria | A Berlitz language training center is scheduled to open in Damascus in fall 2001. Given the thousands of Syrian students forced to study abroad due to a complex and unforgiving university admission system, it is expected that there will be a great demand for high-level expertise, libraries, equipment and supplies. (references) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits. | ||
| "Unforgiving" is generally used as a lexical verb (-ing form) -- approximately 66.67% of the time. "Unforgiving" is used about 39 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Lexical Verb (-ing form) | 66.67% | 26 | 68,323 |
| Adjective (general or positive) | 33.33% | 13 | 97,576 |
| Total | 100.00% | 39 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day |
unforgiving | 4 |
parable servant unforgiving | 2 |
servant unforgiving | 2 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Language | Translations for "unforgiving"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Bulgarian | коравосърдечен (callous, flinthearted, hardhearted, inhumane, obdurate, stony, stony hearted, unfeeling, unpitying, unsympathetic), непрощаващ лесно, непримирим (bitter, die hard, immitigable, intransigent, irreconcilable, unappeasable, unrelenting, warring), злопаметен (rancorous, resentful, sulky). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Chinese | 不原谅人. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Finnish | pitkävihainen (slow to forget). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
French | rancunier. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
German | nachtragend (resentful). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Greek | μη συγχωρών, ανελέητοσ (pitiless). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hungarian | meg nem bocsátó, kérlelhetetlen (immitigable, implacable, inexorable, relentless, rigorous, unrelenting), engesztelhetetlen (implacable, inexorable, irreconcilable, relentless). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Pig Latin | orgivingunfay neiertat. (various references) неумолимый (deadly, immitigable, implacable, relentless), непрощающий. (various references) nepopustljiv (adamant, die hard, iron-bound, unaccommodating, uncomplying, unrelenting, unremitting, unyielding), nemilostiv (ruthless, uncharitable, unmerciful), koji ne prašta. (various references) rencoroso (bitchy, malicious, malign, nasty, rancorous, vicious). (various references) oförsonlig (implacable, inclement, irreconcilable). (various references) bağışlamaz, affetmez. (various references) không khoan dung; hay hiềm thù. (various references) anfaddeugar. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Derivations | |
Words beginning with "unforgiving": unforgivingness, unforgivingnesses. (additional references) | |
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"Unforgiving" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: unforgivin, unforgivng, unforgving. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
| # of Phoneme Matches | Pronunciation | Word(s) rhyming with "unforgiving" (pronounced unfergi"ving) |
| 7 | -f er g i" v i ng | forgiving. |
| 5 | -g i" v i ng | giving, misgiving, thanksgiving. |
| 4 | -i" v i ng | living, reliving, sieving. |
| 3 | -v i ng | absolving, achieving, approving, arriving, behaving, believing, braving, calving, caregiving, carving, caving, conceiving, conniving, conserving, craving, curving, deceiving, delving, depriving, deriving, deserving, disapproving, disbelieving, dissolving, diving, driving, earthmoving, engraving, evolving, grieving, halving, having, heaving, improving, interleaving, interweaving, involving, jiving, leaving, lifesaving, loving, misbehaving, moving, observing, paving, perceiving, preserving, proving, raving, receiving, relieving, removing, reserving, resolving, retrieving, reviving, revolving, revving, saving, serving, shaving, shelving, shoving, skydiving, solving, starving, staving, striving, surviving, thieving, thriving, unbelieving, undeserving, unnerving, unswerving, waiving, waving, weaving. |
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits. | ||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "f-g-g-i-i-n-n-o-r-u-v" | |
-2 letters: forgiving. | |
-3 letters: figuring, fringing, groining, ignoring. | |
-4 letters: foining, forging, girning, grunion, ingoing, inuring, ironing, ringing, roguing, rouging, ruining, voguing. | |
-5 letters: fining, firing, giving, goring, gringo, noggin, origin, riving, roving, urging, vigour, vining, virgin, virion. | |
| Words containing the letters "f-g-g-i-i-n-n-o-r-u-v" | |
+4 letters: unforgivingness. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
Hexadecimal (or equivalents, 770AD-1900s) (references)55 6E 66 6F 72 67 69 76 69 6E 67 |
| Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519; backwards) (references)
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| American Sign Language (origins from 1620-1817 in Italy and, especially, France) (references)
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| Semaphore (1791, in France) (references)
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| Braille (1829, in France) (references)
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Morse Code (1836) (references)..- -. ..-. --- .-. --. .. ...- .. -. --. |
| Dancing Men (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1903) (references)
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Binary Code (1918-1938, probably earlier) (references)01010101 01101110 01100110 01101111 01110010 01100111 01101001 01110110 01101001 01101110 01100111 |
HTML Code (1990) (references)U n f o r g i v i n g |
ISO 10646 (1991-1993) (references)0055 006E 0066 006F 0072 0067 0069 0076 0069 006E 0067 |
| British Sign Language (Fingerspelling, BSL; 1992, British Deaf Association Dictionary of British Sign Language) (references)
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Encryption (beginner's substitution cypher): (references)5580728184737588758073 |
| 1. Definition 2. Synonyms 3. Crosswords 4. Usage: Modern | 5. Usage: Commercial 6. Quotations: Familiar 7. Quotations: Non-fiction 8. Usage Frequency | 9. Expressions: Internet 10. Translations: Modern 11. Derivations 12. Rhymes | 13. Anagrams 14. Orthography 15. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
