alienating

(redirected from alienatingly)
Also found in: Thesaurus.

al·ien·ate

 (āl′yə-nāt′, ā′lē-ə-)
tr.v. al·ien·at·ed, al·ien·at·ing, al·ien·ates
1. To cause to become unfriendly or hostile; estrange: alienate a friend; alienate potential supporters by taking extreme positions.
2. To cause to become withdrawn or unresponsive; isolate or dissociate emotionally: The numbing labor tended to alienate workers.
3. To cause to be transferred; turn away: "He succeeded ... in alienating the affections of my only ward" (Oscar Wilde).
4. Law To transfer (property or a right) to the ownership of another, especially by an act of the owner rather than by inheritance.
[Latin aliēnāre, aliēnāt-, from Latin aliēnus, alien; see alien.]
al′ien·a′tor n.
ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:
Adj.1.alienating - causing hostility or loss of friendlinessalienating - causing hostility or loss of friendliness; "her sudden alienating aloofness"
antagonistic - arousing animosity or hostility; "his antagonistic brusqueness"; "Europe was antagonistic to the Unites States"
Mentioned in ?
References in periodicals archive ?
It's a measure of how patchy, at best, has been the party's electoral recovery from the near urban wipeout it suffered in the 1990s, but also of how biased and alienatingly undemocratic our electoral system can be.
An electoral system that could raise a smile for city's Tories; A 'Total Representation' voting system would give the Conservatives a chance of an MP in Birmingham, says Chris Game
Here is why, for Frye, all literature, even the most wretchedly tragic, the most cynically satirical, and the most alienatingly ironic, can teach us about desire.
The absurd imagination: Northrop Frye and Waiting for Godot
Our gentleman protagonist, alienatingly censorious and moralistic, is metaphorically and literally unseeing, missing what exists literally almost under his nose.
Reading Orlando historically: vagrancy, forest, and vestry values in Shakespeare's As You Like It

Dictionary browser ?
Full browser ?