ill nature

noun

1. unkindly or unpleasant disposition.

Word History and Origins

Origin of ill nature¹

First recorded in 1685–95

Example Sentences

The New York Herald wrote that Johnson’s remarks “smell of chagrin, distrust, ill nature, and bad blood.”

From Time

And it is he, not they, who is justly hailed as the founder of that benign school of comic art which gives us humor without coarseness, and satire without ill nature.

From Project Gutenberg

But the woman seemed to be giving vent to her own ill nature in an evidently customary and certainly vivid way.

From Project Gutenberg

Low comedy especially requires, on the writer's part, much of conversation with the vulgar, and much of ill nature in the observation of their follies.

From Project Gutenberg

About the truth of this it is not necessary to trouble; in such things, and indeed in many others that ill nature floats, there is generally sufficient to give a colouring.

From Project Gutenberg