Search the Dictionary

Not willing; loath; disinclined; reluctant; as, an unwilling servant. And drop at last, but in unwilling ears, This saving counsel, "Keep your piece nine years." Pope. -- Un*will"ing*ly, adv. -- Un*will"ing*ness, n.

A figure of speech in which the speaker breaks off suddenly, as if unwilling or unable to state what was in his mind; as, "I declare to you that his conduct -- but I can not speak of that, here."

Having a repugnance or opposition of mind; disliking; disinclined; unwilling; reluctant. Averse alike to flatter, or offend. Pope. Men who were averse to the life of camps. Macaulay. Pass by securely as men averse from war. Micah ii. 8.

With repugnance or aversion; unwillingly.

The quality of being averse; opposition of mind; unwillingness.

Unwilling; averse; reluctant; hesitating; loath. For wiser brutes were backward to be slaves. Pope.

titude." Sheridan. Bankrupt law, a law by which the property of a person who is unable or unwilling to pay his debts may be taken and distributed to his creditors, and by which a person who has made a full surrender of his property, and is free from fraud, may be discharged from the legal obligation of his debts. See I…

Not having the faculty of discernment; destitute of intellectual light; unable or unwilling to understand or judge; as, authors are blind to their own defects. But hard be hardened, blind be blinded more, That they may stumble on, and deeper fall. Milton.

To annul or destroy; to revoke or recall. The indentures were canceled. Thackeray. He was unwilling to cancel the interest created through former secret services, by being refractory on this occasion. Sir W. Scott.

fe is a quick commodity, and ought not, as a drug to be obtruded on those chapmen who are unwilling to buy it. T. Fuller.

To make difficulty; to be unwilling. [Obs.] If he coyed To hear Cominius speak, I 'll keep at home. Shak.

To move slowly, feebly, or timorously, as from unwillingness, fear, or weakness. The whining schoolboy . . . creeping, like snail, Unwillingly to school. Shak. Like guilty thing, Icreep. Tennyson.

Unwilling to hear or listen; determinedly inattentive; regardless; not to be persuaded as to facts, argument, or exhortation; -- with to; as, deaf to reason. O, that men's ears should be To counsel deaf, but not to flattery! Shak.

Unwillingness to hear; voluntary rejection of what is addressed to the understanding. Nervous deafness, a variety of deafness dependent upon morbid change in some portion of the nervous system, especially the auditory nerve.

To paint; to picture; hence, to describe; to delineate in words; to depict. [Obs.] And do unwilling worship to the saint That on his shield depainted he did see. Spenser. In few words shall see the nature of many memorable persons . . . depainted. Holland.

sel wholly out of the course of his policy. Burke. A government which is either unable or unwilling to redress such wrongs is derelict to its highest duties. J. Buchanan.

To give up unwillingly as what one has wrongfully seized and appropriated; to make restitution of; to surrender; as, he was compelled to disgorge his ill-gotten gains.

To incline away the affections of; to excite a slight aversion in; to indispose; to make unwilling; to alienate. Careful . . . to disincline them from any reverence or affection to the Queen. Clarendon. To social scenes by nature disinclined. Cowper.

ssions, icons, or marriage ceremonies. They are communistic, opposed to any violence, and unwilling to use the labor of animals. Driven out of Russia proper, many have emigrated to Cyprus and Canada. See Raskolnik, below.

Without ears; hence, deaf or unwilling to hear. Pope.