IGNOMINIOUS

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does ignominious mean? 

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

1. (used of conduct or character) deserving or bringing disgrace or shame

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

 Dictionary entry details 

• IGNOMINIOUS (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

(used of conduct or character) deserving or bringing disgrace or shame

Synonyms:

black; disgraceful; ignominious; inglorious; opprobrious; shameful

Context example:

a shameful display of cowardice

Similar:

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

Derivation:

ignominiousness (unworthiness meriting public disgrace and dishonor)

ignominy (a state of dishonor)

 Context examples 

Justine also was a girl of merit and possessed qualities which promised to render her life happy; now all was to be obliterated in an ignominious grave, and I the cause!

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

I could have bolted for the hall door, but it would have been too ignominious.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The punishment seemed to me in a high degree ignominious, especially for so great a girl—she looked thirteen or upwards.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

The team dispersed in ignominious defeat, and it was not until after dark that the dogs came sneaking back, one by one, by meekness and humility signifying their fealty to White Fang.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

The treasurer and admiral insisted that you should be put to the most painful and ignominious death, by setting fire to your house at night, and the general was to attend with twenty thousand men, armed with poisoned arrows, to shoot you on the face and hands.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

A bitter sense of wrong and the thought of Jenny Snow helped her to bear it, and, taking the ignominious place, she fixed her eyes on the stove funnel above what now seemed a sea of faces, and stood there, so motionless and white that the girls found it hard to study with that pathetic figure before them.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

“You are aware that I have some proficiency in the good old British sport of boxing. Occasionally, it is of service, to-day, for example, I should have come to very ignominious grief without it.”

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

All crimes against the state, are punished here with the utmost severity; but, if the person accused makes his innocence plainly to appear upon his trial, the accuser is immediately put to an ignominious death; and out of his goods or lands the innocent person is quadruply recompensed for the loss of his time, for the danger he underwent, for the hardship of his imprisonment, and for all the charges he has been at in making his defence; or, if that fund be deficient, it is largely supplied by the crown.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)