inglorious
/ɪnˈɡlɔːrɪəs
/adjective
1(Of an action or situation) causing shame or a loss of honour: an inglorious episode in British imperial history...
- Ian did so-so at school, and then was kicked out of Sandhurst in inglorious circumstances.
- The saddest aspect of this whole inglorious dilemma is that public opinion is almost completely oblivious of the hidden cost that must be paid to comfort the farmers' pride.
- Rather than casting their community as blameless victims in every conflict, traveller leaders might win greater public sympathy by being more upfront about the complex and often inglorious realities of traveller life.
Synonyms
shameful, dishonourable, ignominious, discreditable, disgraceful, humiliating, mortifying, demeaning, shaming, ignoble, abject, unheroic, undignified, wretched, shabby;
scandalous, shocking
2Not famous or renowned: inglorious though the peasants may have been, this is not synonymous with mute...
- His women reflect ‘silences’ that represent ‘mute inglorious beings’ whose waking hours are a struggle for survival.
- In very truth the sole punishment of ill-livers is an inglorious obscurity
- The life of the powerful wonderworker would have ended in ignoble solitude and inglorious obscurity.
Derivatives
ingloriously
/ adverb ...- Anyway, what began historically on 25 December 800, when Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne emperor, ended ingloriously on 6 August 1806.
- As soon as he could, Delacroix painted the unspeakable: a soldier stretched out ingloriously between two dead horses on a battlefield abandoned by Marshal Marmont.
- Eventually we were released, crawling ingloriously to freedom through a dumb waiter.
ingloriousness
/ noun ...- Ultimately, touchingly, Adams delineates the ingloriousness that lay in the shadows of Wilbur and Orville's ingeniousness and vision.
- Is the glory of heaven no perfecter in itself, but that it needs a foil of depression and ingloriousness in this world, to set it off?
- Some critics felt that Starling had over-reached himself in trying to portray a society on the edge of anarchy in all its ingloriousness.
Origin
Mid 16th century: from Latin inglorius (from in- (expressing negation) + gloria 'glory') + -ous.