Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. The quality or condition of being unpleasant.
- n. An unpleasant experience or situation.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The state or quality of being unpleasant; disagree-ableness. A slight disagreement or falling out; a petty quarrel; an unimportant misunderstanding.
Wiktionary
- n. uncountable The property of being unpleasant or disagreeable.
- n. countable An unpleasant behaviour, occurrence, etc.
WordNet 3.0
- n. the quality of giving displeasure
- n. the feeling caused by disagreeable stimuli; one pole of a continuum of states of feeling
Etymologies
- From unpleasant + -ness. (Wiktionary)
Examples
“In face-to-face interactions, given a certain level of unpleasantness, I do think that, in general, people ought stand up for the person the unpleasantness is directed at.”
“She had longed intensely to warn him – scenting certain unpleasantness to him, and possible danger, although she was loyally firm in the belief that he could not be the man for whom they were searching.”
“Anyway, he came down, without warning, which is one of the few bad habits that excellent Indian man has, and this habit has ended in unpleasantness more than once, as when we played Jungles.”
“In another fifty years we may be able to remember the flag’s primary meaning once that recent unpleasantness is settled.”
“Gross-out comedy substitutes wit and gags for attention-grabbing references to unpleasantness, which is what a not particularly bright five-year-old does'Well, they surely can't be bad enough to cancel out the aggregate joy brought to the world by Eldon's comedy career.”
The Guardian: King of comedy Kevin Eldon finally makes his Edinburgh solo debut
“That's substituting wit and gags for supposedly attention-grabbing references to unpleasantness, which is what a not particularly bright five-year-old does.”
The Guardian: King of comedy Kevin Eldon finally makes his Edinburgh solo debut
“Is it possible that her unpleasantness is a result of people having been ugly to her all her life?”
The Volokh Conspiracy » I Am Apparently “So Desperate for [Ann Bartow’s] Attention,”
“When faced with distasteful tasks, do them immediately, preferably first thing in the morning even if the unpleasantness is a low-priority activity, go ahead and get it out of the way if it can be completed quickly.”
Simon & Schuster: Happiness Is … Simple Steps to a Life of Joy
“Reacting is entrapment, characterized by unpleasantness and a sense of stale inevitability.”
“The Saint's manner was light and genial, almost brotherly; it passed over unpleasant alternatives as remote and improbable contingencies that were hardly worth mentioning at all, and yet the idea of unpleasantness didn't seem to disturb it in any way.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘unpleasantness’.
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understatements
certain words seem given to usage in understatement, as pat phrases, by the mechanism of cliché; others because restraint, moderation or ambiguity are implicit in the words' definitions; and others...
no love lost, a minor inconveni..., that could have g..., he chose poorly, crossing the stre..., I've got a feelin..., slight miscalcula..., oh bother, not amused, no fun, a bit much, a little under th... and 55 more...
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What, another list?
ravishing, ravenous, pronk, brinksmanship, jaspe, mottle, chasm, testy, temperament, ponder, personally, phantom and 206 more...
Tweets
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