Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Not noble in quality, character, or purpose; base or dishonorable. synonym: base.
- adjective Not of high social status; common.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To make ignoble or vile; degrade; disgrace; bring into disrepute.
- Not noble; not illustrious; of low birth or station.
- Not honorable or worthy; mean in character or quality; of no consideration or value.
- In some technical uses, lacking distinction; of low grade; of little esteem.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- transitive verb obsolete To make ignoble.
- adjective Of low birth or family; not noble; not illustrious; plebeian; common; humble.
- adjective Not honorable, elevated, or generous; base.
- adjective (Zoöl.) Not a true or noble falcon; -- said of certain hawks, as the goshawk.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective Not
noble ;plebeian ;common . - adjective Not
honorable .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective not of the nobility
- adjective completely lacking nobility in character or quality or purpose
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
[Middle English, of low birth, from Old French, from Latin ignōbilis : i-, in-, not; see in– + nōbilis, gnōbilis, noble; see noble.]
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
From Latin ignobilis, from in- (not) + gnobilis, later nobilis (noble)
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word ignoble.
Examples
Sorry, no example sentences found.
mohitanand commented on the word ignoble
adjective: dishonorable
In 1919, the World Series was rigged--an ignoble act which baseball took decades to recover from.
October 20, 2016