IGNOBLE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does ignoble mean? 

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

1. completely lacking nobility in character or quality or purpose

2. not of the nobility

  Familiarity information: IGNOBLE used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• IGNOBLE (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Completely lacking nobility in character or quality or purpose

Context example:

I think it a less evil that some criminals should escape than that the government should play an ignoble part

Similar:

base; mean; meanspirited (having or showing an ignoble lack of honor or morality)

currish (base and cowardly)

Also:

cowardly; fearful (lacking courage; ignobly timid and faint-hearted)

contemptible (deserving of contempt or scorn)

dishonorable; dishonourable (lacking honor or integrity; deserving dishonor)

Attribute:

grandeur; magnanimousness; nobility; nobleness (the quality of elevation of mind and exaltation of character or ideals or conduct)

Antonym:

noble (having or showing or indicative of high or elevated character)

Derivation:

ignobleness (the quality of being ignoble)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Not of the nobility

Synonyms:

ignoble; ungentle; untitled

Context example:

untitled civilians

Similar:

lowborn (of humble birth or origins)

Derivation:

ignobleness (the quality of being ignoble)

 Context examples 

My liege, said Sir Nigel, it is a very small matter that I should be hanged, albeit the manner of death is somewhat more ignoble than I had hoped for.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He spends his days in uttering noble sentiments, and contradicting them by ignoble actions.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

At table he failed to hear the conversation about petty and ignoble things, his eager mind seeking out and following cause and effect in everything before him.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

I am surprised, sir, boomed Challenger, stroking his majestic beard, that any man of science should commit himself to so ignoble a sentiment.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Besides, he added, not unkindly, as he laid his hand upon the shoulder of the prostrate man, it is better than to fall before some ignoble foe.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I know it is ignoble: a mere fever of the flesh: not, I declare, the convulsion of the soul. That is just as fixed as a rock, firm set in the depths of a restless sea.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Besides, in drawing the picture of my early days, I also record those events which led, by insensible steps, to my after tale of misery, for when I would account to myself for the birth of that passion which afterwards ruled my destiny I find it arise, like a mountain river, from ignoble and almost forgotten sources; but, swelling as it proceeded, it became the torrent which, in its course, has swept away all my hopes and joys.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

I was so sensitively aware, indeed, of being younger than I could have wished, that for some time I could not make up my mind to pass her at all, under the ignoble circumstances of the case; but, hearing her there with a broom, stood peeping out of window at King Charles on horseback, surrounded by a maze of hackney-coaches, and looking anything but regal in a drizzling rain and a dark-brown fog, until I was admonished by the waiter that the gentleman was waiting for me.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

In truth it was humble—but then it was sheltered, and I wanted a safe asylum: it was plodding—but then, compared with that of a governess in a rich house, it was independent; and the fear of servitude with strangers entered my soul like iron: it was not ignoble—not unworthy—not mentally degrading, I made my decision.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

The keys of the mountain passes still lay in the hands of the shifty and ignoble Charles of Navarre, who had chaffered and bargained both with the English and with the Spanish, taking money from the one side to hold them open and from the other to keep them sealed.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)