CYNICAL

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does cynical mean? 

• CYNICAL (adjective)
  The adjective CYNICAL has 1 sense:

1. believing the worst of human nature and motives; having a sneering disbelief in e.g. selflessness of others

  Familiarity information: CYNICAL used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• CYNICAL (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Believing the worst of human nature and motives; having a sneering disbelief in e.g. selflessness of others

Synonyms:

cynical; misanthropic; misanthropical

Similar:

distrustful (having or showing distrust)

Derivation:

cynic (someone who is critical of the motives of others)

 Context examples 

"Now don't get cynical," Martin exhorted.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

He looked at me, and though his eyes were steady and motionless, there seemed a cynical smile in them.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

He relapsed at once into the half-humorous, half-cynical vein which was his habitual attitude to those about him.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

But one could not look upon his cruel blue eyes, with their drooping, cynical lids, or upon the fierce, aggressive nose and the threatening, deep-lined brow, without reading Nature’s plainest danger-signals.

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

Yet when I think of him in cold blood, far away from the glamour of his presence, I am convinced from his cynical speech and the look which I have caught in his eyes that he is one who should be deeply distrusted.

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

Wild was the wrestle which should be paramount; but another feeling rose and triumphed: something hard and cynical: self-willed and resolute: it settled his passion and petrified his countenance: he went on—During the moment I was silent, Miss Eyre, I was arranging a point with my destiny.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

How I wish I could reproduce the glamour of his discourses, the peculiar mixture of accurate knowledge and of racy imagination which gave them their fascination, until even the Professor's cynical and sceptical smile would gradually vanish from his thin face as he listened.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He continued to grin with a sardonic humour, with a cynical mockery and defiance.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

He was unafraid to die, bitter and cynical of all the ways of living; and yet, dying, he loved life, to the last atom of it.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

To his sombre and cynical spirit all popular applause was always abhorrent, and nothing amused him more at the end of a successful case than to hand over the actual exposure to some orthodox official, and to listen with a mocking smile to the general chorus of misplaced congratulation.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)