mistrustful
Adjective

mistrustful

  1. Having mistrust, lacking trust (in someone or something).
    • c. 1590, William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 3, Act IV, Scene 2,
      […] I hold it cowardice
      To rest mistrustful where a noble heart
      Hath pawn’d an open hand in sign of love;
    • 1910, John Hay Beith, 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.
    • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, London: William Ponsonbie, Book III, Canto 12, p. 579,
      He lookt askew with his mistrustfull eyes,
      And nycely trode, as thornes lay in his way
    • 1847, Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, London: Smith, Elder & Co., Volume I, Chapter 10, p. 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, Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows, Chapter 2,
      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, A Tale of Two Cities, Book 2, Chapter 15,
      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 (translator), Thee First Foure Bookes of Virgil his Aeneid, 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,
      […] 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


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