un·so·cia·ble

(ŭn-sō′shə-bəl)

adj.

1. Not disposed to seek the company of others; not sociable.

2. Not conducive to social exchange: an unsociable atmosphere.

un·so′cia·bil′i·ty, un·so′cia·ble·ness n.

un·so′cia·bly adv.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Sociability/Unsociability

See Also: BEHAVIOR

Antisocial as death —Mary McCarthy
(About as) chummy as a pair of panthers —James Forbes
Flung himself upon Arthur like a young bear —Christopher Isherwood
Friendly as a letter from home —Slogan, wine advisory board
(He insisted on being) friendly, like a man running for sheriff —Jay Parini
Greeted me like the morning sun that had deserted the skies —Mike Fredman
The greeting I received (from Phoebe) was as damp as the weather outside —Mike Fredman
He was never alone. He wore other people like armour —William McIlvanney
(The knocking was) hostile as a kick in the balls —Harold Adams
Similes can provide attention-getting openings for a story, as this one did for Adams’ mystery novel, The Fourth Widow.
Pleasant as a smile —Anon
Snarled like a racoon (whenever she was pushed) —Miles Gibson
Unresponsive as a bag of wet laundry —David Leavitt
Affable as a wet dog —Alfred Henry Lewis

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Noun

unsociability - an unsociable disposition; avoiding friendship or companionship

unsociableness

introversion - (psychology) an introverted disposition; concern with one's own thoughts and feelings

disposition, temperament - your usual mood; "he has a happy disposition"

standoffishness, withdrawnness, aloofness, remoteness - a disposition to be distant and unsympathetic in manner

secretiveness, closeness - characterized by a lack of openness (especially about one's actions or purposes)

sociability, sociableness - the relative tendency or disposition to be sociable or associate with one's fellows

Translations

unsociability

[ˈʌnˌsəʊʃəˈbɪlɪtɪ] N → insociabilidad f

Collins Spanish Dictionary - Complete and Unabridged 8th Edition 2005 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1971, 1988 © HarperCollins Publishers 1992, 1993, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2005

unsociability

n → Ungeselligkeit f

Collins German Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged 7th Edition 2005. © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1980 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1997, 1999, 2004, 2005, 2007

Mentioned in

References in periodicals archive

Traditionally, psychologists have named these three categories as shyness, avoidance, and unsociability. And new research aims to see whether all of these three categories are associated with negative psychological outcomes.

Is Being Unsociable The Secret To Creativity?

According to the factor scores, there were nine items that accounted for 62.31% of the total variances explained: aimless, likes challenge, disobedience, unsociability, multi-exploration, self-willed, gender identity, paranoid, and frailty.

GAMERS' EGO IDENTITY INFLUENCES REFERRAL PROGRAM INVOLVEMENT

Returning to the statement of the "unifying madness", this statement should be probably perceived as indicating a middle way in between optimistic views of inherent sociability and pessimistic views of inherent unsociability. Castoriadis founds the being's ability for ex nihilo creation upon an ontology that is contrasted to the Aristotelian a priori sociability, and the Socratic ideal of the soul as expressed by Plato.

AUTO-POIESIS: THE SELF AND THE PRINCIPLE OF CREATIVITY IN THE PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND PSYCHOANALYSIS OF CORNELIUS CASTORIADIS

Or as Gutierrez Lopez and Ovaska (2013) put it, "unsociability is an integral part of 'being social'" because "people use the unsocial features [unfriending, blocking, etc.] to manage their self-presentation and privacy concerns" (p.

"He's Got His Own Sea": Political Facebook Unfriending in the Personal Public Sphere

Among their topics are forgotten social psychologies: Tarde's formulations, on his Psychologie [ETH]conomique, Tarde as the "swallow" of French criminology, from the philosophy of history to social science: Tarde as reader of Cournot, and Tarde and Simmel on sociability and unsociability. Distributed in the US by Books International, Inc.

The Anthem Companion to Gabriel Tarde

[USA], Nov 21 (ANI): Everyone needs an occasional break from the social ramble, but sometimes unsociability or distancing yourself from people may help improve creativity, reveals a study.

Being unsocial may boost your creativity: Study

The facts of inability to express feelings and thoughts in a comfortable way, inability to make friendship, unsociability in relations with opposite sex, and restrictions of social communication and interaction experienced in such settings as school, work place, family; -all of which are regarded as communication problems today- have led social scientists and psychologists to deal with social skills over the past years (Tegin, 1990).

Examination of social skill levels of the badminton players

1) The Child Social Preference Scale (CSPS; Coplan, Prakash, O'Neil, & Armer, 2004), composed of 14 items answered by parents and teachers, was developed to measure both Shyness and Unsociability motivations for social withdrawal in children.

Spanish adaptation of social withdrawal motivation and frequency scales

--13 March 1936 (Woolf D5: 16-17): she talks about her literary labours ("Never have I worked so hard at any book [The Years]"); "our unsociability"; "the crisis"--the realization that Europe is on the brink of terrible war ("Europe is now on the verge of the greatest smash for 600 years"), herself feeling insignificant, with a sense of doomed fatality, anxiety and helplessness:

Over the edge: Virginia Woolf's price for literary immortality