unsympathetic
/ˌʌnsɪmpəˈθɛtɪk
/adjective
1Not feeling, showing, or expressing sympathy: I’m not being unsympathetic, but I can’t see why you put up with him...
- The precise merit of his book is that he details how pluralist authors have evolved in response to both sympathetic and unsympathetic critics.
- There's nothing quite as unsympathetic as a politician looking for sympathy.
- A petite woman dressed in pearls and a well-tailored suit, she comes across as shrewd and hardheaded but not unsympathetic to her subjects.
Synonyms
uncaring, unconcerned, unfeeling, insensitive, unkind, compassionless, uncharitable, unpitying, pitiless, uncommiserating, indifferent, unresponsive, apathetic, unmoved, untouched, heartless, cold, hard-hearted, stony-hearted, hard, harsh, callous, cruel, inhuman
2Not showing approval or favour towards an idea or action: they were initially unsympathetic towards the cause of Irish freedom...
- Councillors decided the proposals were unsympathetic towards existing properties and grouping the low-cost homes together would create a ‘ghetto’ at one end of the cul-de-sac.
- His book is particularly unsympathetic towards the Lhasa theocracy, which is not surprising since he chronicles the 1904 invasion of Tibet by the British.
- In 1930 he assumed power in Brazil after a revolution and his dictatorship was unsympathetic towards modern art.
Synonyms
opposed to, against, (dead) set against, antagonistic towards, inimical to, anti, ill-disposed towards, disapproving of
3(Of a person) not friendly or cooperative; unlikeable: a totally unsympathetic character...
- What I got instead was a gut-wrenchingly awful representation of my community, peopled with unlikeable and unsympathetic characters and crammed full of every negative Jewish stereotype imaginable.
- It was an encounter which began to turn the public against Judith, who appeared on the defensive, uncontrolled, bad tempered and all in all a rather unsympathetic character.
- A reader would understandably begin to suspect that he might be shirking his imaginative responsibilities here by offering us nothing more than an unsympathetic portrait of an unsympathetic character.
Synonyms
unlikeable, disagreeable, unpleasant, objectionable, obnoxious, unsavoury, unattractive;
unsociable, uncongenial, unfriendly, inhospitable, unneighbourly, unapproachable, aloof, cool, cold, distant;
nasty, ill-natured, cross, bad-tempered
Derivatives
unsympathetically
/ adverb ...- It worries them that many vintage structures, both vernacular and colonial, are being changed unsympathetically, resulting in eyesores, even on King Street.
- He believes that developers struggle to maintain prices when, at the peak of a market cycle, they've squeezed every last room they can into an unsympathetically designed space.
- Reading unsympathetically, we may reflect that there's not much he does that isn't for show.