unfriendly
/ʌnˈfɹɛn(d)li/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.10 in modern English
17
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
3
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
noun
An enemy.
Example Sentences
- "Shrekkies will notice that the musical is going off-piste from the film right from the start when the curtain rises to reveal a seven-year-old Shrek turfed out into an unfriendly world by his parents."
- "The reputations of our universities and our research base are already under threat because of the fallout from the EU referendum result, which is making the UK an unfriendlier place for overseas scholars and students, as well as cutting off access to an important stream of research funding and to a vibrant and well-developed ecosystem for collaborative work."
- "I thought of him as a young man in Washington for the first time, first job with McCarthy, and that that was probably one of the unfriendliest spaces at the time for a gay person."
- "Sweep the valley compound and eliminate any unfriendlies you encounter."
- "You see, the mission of almost every teenage girl on the loose is to first identify the targets, just like a war. These include the primary objective (the boy), the enemy (other girls), the friendlies (sympathetic girl friends and the boy's family), and unfriendlies (other boys)."
Etymology
From Middle English unfrendly, unfrendli, unfrendely, from Old English *unfrēondlīċ (suggested by derivative unfrēondlīċe (“in an unfriendly manner; unfriendly”, adverb)), equivalent to un- + friendly. Cognate with Saterland Frisian uunfrüntelk, uunfjuntelk (“unfriendly”), West Frisian ûnfreonlik (“unfriendly”), Dutch onvriendelijk (“unfriendly”), German Low German unfrünnelk (“unfriendly”), German unfreundlich (“unfriendly”), Faroese ófryntligur (“unfriendly”), Icelandic ófrýnilegur (“ugly; disturbing”).
Origin
Word Breakdown
Inflected Forms
unfriendlier (comparative)
more unfriendly (comparative)
unfriendliest (superlative)
most unfriendly (superlative)
unfriendlies (plural)