mistrustful

mistrust +‎ -ful

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, 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, “Book III, Canto XII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, page 579:

     He lookt askew with his mistrustfull eyes,
     And nycely trode, as thornes lay in his way

   • 1847 October 16, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], chapter X, in Jane Eyre. An Autobiography. […], volume I, London: Smith, Elder, and Co., […], →OCLC, page 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 October, Kenneth Grahame, chapter 2, in The Wind in the Willows, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC:

     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, “Book 2, Chapter 15”, in A Tale of Two Cities, London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC:

     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, 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; Shakespeare’s Venus & Adonis: […]‎, 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.

• (having mistrust): distrustful, suspicious, untrusting, wary

• mistrustfully (adv)
• mistrustfulness (n)

• “mistrustful”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.