Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Not resembling or not befitting a mother.
Wiktionary
- adj. Not motherly; unmaternal.
Etymologies
- un- + motherly (Wiktionary)
Examples
“If Mama Cow continues to act unmotherly, this calf will be a bum orphan.”
“In biographies, Flora is often presented as cruel and unmotherly to Jack.”
“And again solemnly interrogated, declares, that she would have been drawn with wild horses, rather than have touched the bairn with an unmotherly hand.”
“I scrutinized her selection of eye shadow, dipped my fingers in pots of brilliant pink blush, and sat mesmerized by the wondrous transformation taking place before me—a person turning from my mom into a woman who seemed beautiful and sophisticated and so, well, unmotherly.”
Simon & Schuster: Everything I Needed to Know About Being a Girl I Learned from Judy Blume
“He and all the world thought hardly of me for my strange, unmotherly resolve, and I deserved to be misjudged. ”
“And what do you think became of the unmotherly hen?”
The Nursery, No. 106, October, 1875. Vol. XVIII. A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers
“Would you believe it, children? in one day, this unmotherly hen had pecked all but one of her chickens to death; and, when Aunt Jane found this poor chap, he had but one eye, and all the toes were gone from one foot; so that he had to stand on the other.”
The Nursery, No. 106, October, 1875. Vol. XVIII. A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers
“No one has ever attempted to violate the solitude of the sanctuary where Selima wept for the seven little ones taken to the grave, and for the absent one whom she had treated with unmotherly neglect.”
“Feigning to be unmotherly, she spurred on her husband to grasp his freedom, and urged and tempted him to insurrection; causing her son to be summoned to Sweden with a promise of vast gifts.”
“There was nothing in either her looks or her manner to explain George's uncomfortable feeling; and yet it increased, becoming suddenly a vague resentment, as if she had done something unmotherly to him.”
The Magnificent Ambersons; illustrated by Arthur William Brown
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