Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Doubt, distrust, or apprehension.
  • noun A feeling of misgiving.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A failing of confidence; doubt; distrust.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Evil premonition; doubt; distrust; a feeling of apprehension; -- used commonly in the plural.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun doubt, apprehension, a feeling of dread

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun painful expectation
  • noun uneasiness about the fitness of an action
  • noun doubt about someone's honesty

Etymologies

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Examples

  • This was quite intolerable; a misgiving was a warning voice from God, which should be attended to as a man valued his soul.

    The Fair Haven Samuel Butler 1868

  • I read with some kind of misgiving a statement at the CRTC hearing which says "lack of determination, vigour and purpose in addressing the objectives of Parliament".

    The National Broadcasting Dream 1974

  • The impressions his mind had received while passing the churchyard, now returned upon him with added gloom; a kind of misgiving came over him; and a thousand boding thoughts haunted him like spirits, and hanging, as it were, on his heart, dragged it down farther and farther at every step.

    The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction Volume 12, No. 331, September 13, 1828 Various

  • At the bottom of all the agitation a wedding sets going in us all there is lying, I think a kind of misgiving, a secret pity for the fate of the poor rose which is picked now and must forthwith wither; and our boisterous jollification is but an awkward barely successful effort at concealing it.

    The Life of Froude Paul, Herbert 1905

  • At the bottom of all the agitation a wedding sets going in us all there is lying, I think a kind of misgiving, a secret pity for the fate of the poor rose which is picked now and must forthwith wither; and our boisterous jollification is but an awkward barely successful effort at concealing it.

    The Life of Froude 1894

  • But, if we take the story in the Acts of the Apostles, there is not the smallest foothold for the fashionable notion, which is entirely due to men's dislike of the supernatural, that there was any kind of misgiving in the young Pharisee, springing from the influence of

    Expositions of Holy Scripture Second Corinthians, Galatians, and Philippians Chapters I to End. Colossians, Thessalonians, and First Timothy. Alexander Maclaren 1868

  • a misgiving which is strengthened by reflecting on all those to him incomprehensible inferences to which the admission of the argument leads him, and which seem almost to involve contradictions.

    Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts From The Edinburgh Review, October 1849, Volume 90, No. CLXXXII. (Pages 293-356) Henry Rogers 1841

  • I looked with misgiving toward the south-west and thought of the six hundred miles of hardship before us — ay, if it were no worse than hardship.

    Chapter 27 2010

  • The latter hesitated in the midst of the cut and looked around with querulous misgiving at the faces of the others.

    A GOBOTO NIGHT 2010

  • He exudes brisk, straightforward confidence, without pretense or misgiving.

    The Last Ace 2009

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