unkind
adjective
Simple meaning
Lacking kindness, sympathy, benevolence, gratitude.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
uhnkyndSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ənˈkaɪnd
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
Lacking kindness, sympathy, benevolence, gratitude, or similar; cruel, harsh or unjust; ungrateful.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C2 · Proficient (estimated)
- Frequency
- Rare
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Lacking kindness, sympathy, benevolence, gratitude, or similar; cruel, harsh or unjust; ungrateful.
Used this way, unkind is a reasonably familiar word with a clearly warm, approving pull. It carries warmth, so it reads as personal rather than detached.
- Emotional tone
- Positive
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Moderate
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Grateful and appreciative
- Usage feel
- Warm and expressive
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use unkind
- “A thoughtless and unkind remark.”adjective
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Similar Words, What’s the Difference?
Close in meaning, but not always interchangeable.
Severe or cruel.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A person of mean disposition.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: lacking kindness or sympathy or benevolence or gratitude
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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.