unforgiving
adjective
Simple meaning
Unwilling or unable to forgive or show mercy.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
uhnfergivingSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ənfɚˈɡɪvɪŋ
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
adjective
Unwilling or unable to forgive or show mercy
figurative
Having no allowance for weakness.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C2 · Proficient (estimated)
- Frequency
- Rare
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Unwilling or unable to forgive or show mercy
Used this way, unforgiving is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It keeps things gentle rather than emphatic.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Reluctant or hesitant
- Usage feel
- Understated and gentle
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use unforgiving
- “A surly unforgiving old woman.”adjective
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Antonyms
Sense: unwilling or unable to forgive or show mercy
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.