UNWORTHINESS

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does unworthiness mean? 

• UNWORTHINESS (noun)
  The noun UNWORTHINESS has 2 senses:

1. the quality or state of lacking merit or value

2. the quality of being not particularly suitable or befitting

  Familiarity information: UNWORTHINESS used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• UNWORTHINESS (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The quality or state of lacking merit or value

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Hypernyms ("unworthiness" is a kind of...):

bad; badness (that which is below standard or expectations as of ethics or decency)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "unworthiness"):

baseness; contemptibility; despicability; despicableness; sordidness (unworthiness by virtue of lacking higher values)

disgracefulness; ignominiousness; shamefulness (unworthiness meriting public disgrace and dishonor)

Antonym:

worthiness (the quality or state of having merit or value)

Derivation:

unworthy (morally reprehensible)

unworthy (lacking in value or merit)

Sense 2

Meaning:

The quality of being not particularly suitable or befitting

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

inappropriateness; unworthiness

Context example:

his praise released from her loud protestations of her unworthiness

Hypernyms ("unworthiness" is a kind of...):

ineptness; unsuitability; unsuitableness (the quality of having the wrong properties for a specific purpose)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "unworthiness"):

inappositeness; inaptness (inappropriateness)

infelicity (inappropriate and unpleasing manner or style (especially manner or style of expression))

 Context examples 

I afterwards meant—steadfastly meant, and purposed to myself—to bear the whole weight of knowing the unworthiness of one to whom you had been so good.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Perhaps during former years he had suffered from the late-discovered unworthiness of one beloved and so was disposed to set a greater value on tried worth.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

She leaned toward him, entreaty in her eyes, and as he looked at her delicate face and into her pure, limpid eyes, as of old he was struck with his own unworthiness.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

As to birth, it does not become me to boast, and there is sooth in what you say as to the unworthiness of clerks, but it is none the less true that I am as well born as you.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I have been more pained, said she, by her endeavors to acquit him than by all the rest; for it irritates her mind more than the most perfect conviction of his unworthiness can do.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

Her prodigious innocence appalled him, freezing on his lips all ardors of speech, and convincing him, in spite of himself, of his own unworthiness.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

In the keen distress of the discovery of his unworthiness, I thought more of all that was brilliant in him, I softened more towards all that was good in him, I did more justice to the qualities that might have made him a man of a noble nature and a great name, than ever I had done in the height of my devotion to him.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)