ignominious

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ig·no·min·i·ous

(ĭg′nə-mĭn′ē-əs)

adj.

1. Characterized by or deserving shame or disgrace: "It was an ignominious end ... as a desperate mutiny by a handful of soldiers blossomed into full-scale revolt" (Harry Anderson).

2. Degrading; debasing: "The young people huddled with their sodden gritty towels and ignominious goosebumps inside the gray-shingled bathhouse" (John Updike).

ig′no·min′i·ous·ly adv.

ig′no·min′i·ous·ness n.

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.

ig•no•min•i•ous

(ˌɪg nəˈmɪn i əs)

adj.

1. marked by or attended with ignominy; discreditable; humiliating: an ignominious retreat.

2. bearing or deserving ignominy; contemptible.

[1375–1425; late Middle English < Latin]

ig`no•min′i•ous•ly, adv.

ig`no•min′i•ous•ness, n.

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

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Adj.

ignominious - (used of conduct or character) deserving or bringing disgrace or shame; "Man...has written one of his blackest records as a destroyer on the oceanic islands"- Rachel Carson; "an ignominious retreat"; "inglorious defeat"; "an opprobrious monument to human greed"; "a shameful display of cowardice"

inglorious, shameful, opprobrious, disgraceful, black

dishonorable, dishonourable - lacking honor or integrity; deserving dishonor; "dishonorable in thought and deed"

ignominious

adjective humiliating, disgraceful, shameful, sorry, scandalous, abject, despicable, mortifying, undignified, disreputable, dishonourable, inglorious, discreditable, indecorous Many thought that he was doomed to ignominious failure.
worthy, honourable, reputable, creditable

Collins Thesaurus of the English Language – Complete and Unabridged 2nd Edition. 2002 © HarperCollins Publishers 1995, 2002

ignominious

adjective

Meriting or causing shame or dishonor:

discreditable, disgraceful, dishonorable, disreputable, opprobrious, shameful.

Translations

ignominieux

ignomignoso vergognoso

ignominious

[ˌɪgnəˈmɪnɪəs] ADJ [act, behaviour] → ignominioso, oprobioso; [defeat] → vergonzoso

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

ignominious

[ˌɪgnəˈmɪniəs] adj [defeat, retreat] → ignominieux/euse

Collins English/French Electronic Resource. © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

ignominious

adj → schmachvoll; (= humiliating) → entwürdigend; defeat → schmachvoll, schmählich; behaviour → schändlich, unehrenhaft; to come to an ignominious end → ein schmachvolles Ende finden

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

ignominious

[ˌɪgnəˈmɪnɪəs] adj → vergognoso/a, ignominioso/a

Collins Italian Dictionary 1st Edition © HarperCollins Publishers 1995

References in classic literature ?

For forty years together it will remember its injury down to the smallest, most ignominious details, and every time will add, of itself, details still more ignominious, spitefully teasing and tormenting itself with its own imagination.

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Men may seem detestable as joint stock-companies and nations; knaves, fools, and murderers there may be; men may have mean and meagre faces; but man, in the ideal, is so noble and so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any ignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their costliest robes.

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To be drowned in a pond, though it might be called an ignominious fate by the ignorant, is yet a bright and peaceful ending in comparison with some other endings to one's earthly career which I have mentally quaked at in the intervals or even in the midst of violent exertions.

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But to achieve this aim it is necessary that you should add your efforts and should, if possible, forget the misfortunes you have suffered, should entertain the hope of a less cruel fate, should be certain that inevitable and ignominious death awaits those who make any attempt on your persons or on what remains of your property, and finally that you should not doubt that these will be safeguarded, since such is the will of the greatest and most just of monarchs.

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Recovering his consciousness, Cornelius found himself alone, and recognised the room where he was, -- "the family cell," as Gryphus had called it, -- as the fatal passage leading to ignominious death.

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A bitter sense of wrong and the thought of Jenny Snow helped her to bear it, and, taking the ignominious place, she fixed her eyes on the stove funnel above what now seemed a sea of faces, and stood there, so motionless and white that the girls found it hard to study with that pathetic figure before them.

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can everything noble and everything base be lodged together in the same bosom?" Lady Bellaston, and the ignominious circumstance of having been kept, rose again in his mind, and stopt his mouth from any reply.

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As this dark mass had been transformed from a bright and love-indorsed flower to be an ignominious vegetable, so had her summer hopes wilted and perished.

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Meantime tea was to be brought in by the cook, and the two naughty children were to have theirs in an ignominious manner in the kitchen.

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What a misfortune, indeed, should it come too soon, since his reviving consciousness would bring the recollection of the ignominious offence which he had beheld his nephew in the very act of committing!

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A crowd of eager and curious schoolboys, understanding little of the matter in hand, except that it gave them a half-holiday, ran before her progress, turning their heads continually to stare into her face and at the winking baby in her arms, and at the ignominious letter on her breast.

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But another law had placed her where she must commit her crime or starve with her child -- and before God that law is responsible for both her crime and her ignominious death!

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