dispiteous
English
Etymology
Variant of despiteous, later reanalysed as dis- + piteous.
Adjective
dispiteous (comparative more dispiteous, superlative most dispiteous)
- (archaic, literary) Not showing mercy or pity.
- c. 1460s, John Hardyng, “Rychard the third”, in The Chronicle of Ihon Hardyng in Metre, London: Richard Grafton, published 1543:
- […] these .ii. noble princes [wer] by treyterous tiranny taken & depriued of their estate, shortly shut vp in prison & priuely slain & murderd by ye cruell ambicion of their vnnaturall vncle & dispiteous tourmentours […]
- c. 1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life and Death of King Iohn”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene i]:
- How now, foolish rheum!
Turning dispiteous torture out of door!
I must be brief, lest resolution drop
Out at mine eyes in tender womanish tears.
- 1851, Thomas Smibert, “The Wallace Wight”, in Io Anche! Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, Edinburgh: James Hogg, page 56:
- O England! when the Wallace Wight was led,
A fettered wonder, to thy capital,
How cruel, how dispiteous was his fall!
- 1911, Max Beerbohm, chapter 16, in Zuleika Dobson, New York: John Lane, published 1912, page 252:
- “The unerring owls have hooted. The dispiteous and humorous gods have spoken. […] ”
- 1997, Gretel Ehrlich, chapter 3, in Questions of Heaven: The Chinese Journeys of an American Buddhist, Boston: Beacon Press, pages 72–73:
- As we began our descent from the mountains, the image of Yi villages threaded together only by footpaths stayed in my mind. Not that they hadn’t been affected by the dispiteous anarchism of the Cultural Revolution, but they lived in relative isolation.
Derived terms
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