Word Pronunciation & Dictionary

dispiteous

Word Rarity Very rare

Frequency: Zipf frequency 0.00 in modern English

Syllables: dispi-teous
IPA

13

Scrabble Score

10

Letters

2

Syllables

8

Unique Chars

Meaning

adj

Not showing mercy or pity.

Archaic; Literary

Example Sentences

"[…] these .ii. noble princes [wer] by treyterous tiranny taken & depriued of their estate, shortly shut vp in prison & priuely slain & murderd by yᵉ cruell ambicion of their vnnaturall vncle & dispiteous tourmentours […]"
"How now, foolish rheum! Turning dispiteous torture out of door! I must be brief, lest resolution drop Out at mine eyes in tender womanish tears."
"O England! when the Wallace Wight was led, A fettered wonder, to thy capital, How cruel, how dispiteous was his fall!"
"“The unerring owls have hooted. The dispiteous and humorous gods have spoken. […]”"
"As we began our descent from the mountains, the image of Yi villages threaded together only by footpaths stayed in my mind. Not that they hadn’t been affected by the dispiteous anarchism of the Cultural Revolution, but they lived in relative isolation."

Etymology

Variant of despiteous, later reanalysed as dis- + piteous.

Word Breakdown

Prefix: dis

Usage

Inflected Forms

more dispiteous (comparative) most dispiteous (superlative)

Derived Forms

dispiteously dispiteousness

Synonyms

cruel impiteous merciless pitiless ruthless unpitying

Questions

What does dispiteous mean?: Not showing mercy or pity.
Where does dispiteous come from?: Variant of despiteous, later reanalysed as dis- + piteous.

How to pronounce dispiteous

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