uningratiating

It's a tough, uningratiating play that has fascinated writers as different as TS Eliot and Bertolt Brecht.

Coriolanus – review 2012

This highly intelligent, wholly uningratiating movie brings together two immensely gifted New Yorkers, both in their 40s and from different backgrounds, to make a movie in Los Angeles.

Greenberg 2010

There are variations? coffee, piano music, very occasionally paint (he started out as a painter)? but Kounellis is faithful to his repertoire of uningratiating materials.

Jannis Kounellis 2010

Think of it this way – Andras Schiff may well be the anti-Lang Lang – prickly and uningratiating.

Archive 2007-10-01 2007

Think of it this way – Andras Schiff may well be the anti-Lang Lang – prickly and uningratiating.

Night Schiff 2007

I'd hazard that this has something to do with the untranslatable subtlety of his one-liners (dependent as they are on situation and delivery) and the uningratiating nature of his persona (complete with refusal to acknowledge blatant neuroses).

Archive 2006-01-01 Ann Althouse 2006

Then, too, the nervous and trivial grin with which he prefaced almost all his infrequent remarks -- and the odd little noise, that was nearly a snigger and just missed being a cough, with which he ended them -- was peculiarly uningratiating in a fat and middle-aged person; his weak eyes very rarely met yours full-gaze; and he was continually handling his face or fidgeting with a cigarette or twisting in his chair.

The Cream of the Jest: A Comedy of Evasions 1917

He weighed the cold uningratiating virtues of priggishness against his smouldering passion for Amanda, and against his obstinate sympathy for Prothero's grossness and his mother's personal pride, and he made his choice.

The Research Magnificent 1906

His severe and uningratiating all-Bach recital drove one of my fellow critics to describe him as "the Hosni Mubarak of pianists".

Telegraph.co.uk - Telegraph online, Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph Ivan Hewett 2011

There are variations - coffee, piano music, very occasionally paint (he started out as a painter) - but Kounellis is faithful to his repertoire of uningratiating materials.

The Guardian World News Laura Cumming 2010