CONGENIAL

Pronunciation (US):

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IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does congenial mean? 

• CONGENIAL (adjective)
  The adjective CONGENIAL has 2 senses:

1. suitable to your needs

2. (used of plants) capable of cross-fertilization or of being grafted

  Familiarity information: CONGENIAL used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• CONGENIAL (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Suitable to your needs

Context example:

two congenial spirits united...by mutual confidence and reciprocal virtues

Similar:

sociable (friendly and pleasant)

Also:

compatible (able to exist and perform in harmonious or agreeable combination)

friendly (characteristic of or befitting a friend)

sympathetic (expressing or feeling or resulting from sympathy or compassion or friendly fellow feelings; disposed toward)

Antonym:

uncongenial (not suitable to your tastes or needs)

Derivation:

congeniality; congenialness (compatibility between persons)

Sense 2

Meaning:

(used of plants) capable of cross-fertilization or of being grafted

Similar:

compatible (able to exist and perform in harmonious or agreeable combination)

 Context examples 

I was brought up in the freer, less conventional atmosphere of South Australia, and this English life, with its proprieties and its primness, is not congenial to me.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I have already explained to you, however, that my career had in any case reached its crisis, and that no possible conclusion to it could be more congenial to me than this.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

She detected unguessed finenesses in him that seemed to bud, day by day, like flowers in congenial soil.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

He is not particularly intelligent—not a man likely to be congenial to a quick-witted Latin.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

They would doubtless be congenial with the generality of female minds.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

He hastened upstairs, and a few minutes later I heard the slam of the hall door, which told me that he was off once more upon his congenial hunt.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

And I have no doubt she did; or that he loved her, however strange it may appear; though, to be sure, they were a congenial couple.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

I may be absent a month or two; but do not interfere with my motions, I entreat you; leave me to peace and solitude for a short time; and when I return, I hope it will be with a lighter heart, more congenial to your own temper.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

When we went in, and I had removed her bonnet and coat, I took her on my knee; kept her there an hour, allowing her to prattle as she liked: not rebuking even some little freedoms and trivialities into which she was apt to stray when much noticed, and which betrayed in her a superficiality of character, inherited probably from her mother, hardly congenial to an English mind.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

My friend’s temper had not improved since he had been deprived of the congenial surroundings of Baker Street.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)