ignominious
adjUK /ˌɪɡ.nə(ʊ)ˈmɪ.ni.əs/ · US /ɪɡ.nəˈmɪ.ni.əs/
Etymology
From Late Middle English ignominious (“disgraceful, shameful”), from Middle French ignominieux (modern French ignominieux), or from its etymon Latin ignōminiōsus (“disgraced; disgraceful, shameful, ignominious”), from ignōminia (“disgrace, dishonour, shame, ignominy”) + -ōsus (suffix meaning ‘full of; overly; prone to’ forming adjectives from nouns). Ignōminia is derived from ig- (variant of in- (prefix meaning not) + nōmen (“name; good name, reputation”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₁nómn̥ (“name”)) + -ia (suffix forming feminine abstract nouns). By surface analysis, ignominy + -ious (suffix forming adjectives from nouns denoting the presence of a quality in any degree, typically an abundance).
Especially of a person: deserving of disgrace or dishonour; contemptible, despicable.
Causing or marked by disgrace or dishonour; disgraceful, dishonourable; also (loosely), humiliating, shameful.
- The time when the pseudovirtuous men and women die a painful and ignominious death has yet to come.
- Hath he not tvvit our Soueraigne Lady here / VVith ignominious vvords, though Clarkely coucht? / As if ſhe had ſuborned ſome to ſvveare / Falſe allegations, to o'rethrovv his ſtate.1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Second Part of Henry the Sixt, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene i], page 131, column 2:
4 more examples
- The golden eagle, which glittered in the front of the legion, was the object of their fondest devotion; nor was it esteemed less impious than it was ignominious, to abandon that sacred ensign in the hour of danger.1776, Edward Gibbon, chapter I, in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, volume I, London: […] W[illiam] Strahan; and T[homas] Cadell, […], →OCLC:
- And it came to pass that they took him; and his name was Nehor; and they carried him upon the top of the hill Manti, and there he was caused, or rather did acknowledge, between the heavens and the earth, that what he had taught to the people was contrary to the word of God; and there he suffered an ignominious death.1830, The Book of Mormon:
- [T]he façade of the cathedral did not stand ignominious in faded stucco, but had upon it the magnificent promise of the half-completed marble inlaying and statued niches, which Giotto had devised a hundred and fifty years before; […]1862 July – 1863 August, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], “The Barber’s Shop”, in Romola. […], volume I, London: Smith, Elder and Co., […], published 1863, →OCLC, book I, page 53:
- Greene died of a debauch; and Marlowe, the gracer of tragedians, perished in an ignominious brawl.1902, Thomas Ebenezer Webb, The Mystery of William Shakespeare: A Summary of Evidence, page 242:
- Derived terms
- ignominiously, ignominiousness, unignominious
- Related terms
- ignominy