grateless en · ADJ
Etymology
From grate + -less. Sense 2 on the analogy of grateful.
Meanings
- (not-comparable) Without a grate.
-
(nonstandard, not-comparable) Ungrateful, thankless.
Corruption’s loathsome touch hath not yet marr’d / The beauty of Eve’s youngest, fresh as when / Beside yon priestless altar late he stood, / And, in the pious fervour of his soul), / Warm with the hope of an exalted faith, / And breathing forth the prayerful homage, paid / The votive off’ring grateful to his God. Sad lesson of mortality, and taught / At sadder cost—the fearful risk of heav’n. Ah, grateless unbeliever!
1845 August, Thomas Eyre Poole, “The First Murderer. (A Fragment).”, in The Church of England Magazine, volume XX, number 568, London: Edwards and Hughes, […], published 14 February 1846, page 104, column 2:“I am duly grateful to those necessities which inclined your valour to such leniency. I think,” he added with a sneer, “it is not the first time the poor Jew’s usefulness will have saved the poor Jew’s neck!” / Oswald walked away to the balcony, and stood reflecting for a moment. Then he came back. “Isaac,” he said, “it serves no purpose for us to quarrel. I have gone so far with you I must needs go still a little farther. You, who know so much, must needs know a little more; therefore, listen to me now, and, when I have done, then if by your cunning—whether it comes from heaven or hell I will not ask—if you can get me from the shadow of this oncoming cloud that blights my outlook and chills my courage; if you can twist these adverse circumstances that beset me into the shape I would, you will save more than you yet think of, nor find me grateless.”
1894, Edwin Lester Arnold, chapter I, in The Constable of St. Nicholas, London: Chatto & Windus, […], page 37:Here May and April flourish all year long in temperate pleasantness and grateful cool, their zephyrs soft, their skies serene and bright. Between the mount of Ossa and a spur of towering Olympus there is spread a valley full of freshness and of flowers, whose beauty Peneus, with his grateless child, increasingly enriches and augments with leaves of laurel and with silver streams.
1958, Bernardo de Balbuena, translated by Samuel Beckett, “Immortal Springtime and Its Tokens”, in Octavio Paz, compiler, Anthology of Mexican Poetry, Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, →LCCN, page 51:Thence passing through the land of the Sabines, / Divided by the lofty Appenines, / Rising, she found the world-renownèd Rome, / And grateful welcom’d, made it long a home, / Where, honour’d she, respected, all were bound / To cultivate some portion of the ground, / In recognition of her most just claims, / The least of which is, ’tis her power that tames / Horse, ox, and heifer, for man’s uses, though / Not for those uses which their blood lets flow / In crimson streams, with which life ebbs away— / A cruel practice is this art to slay! / But for those uses, perhaps not enjoined, / For benefit implied of all mankind, / From their mark’d instincts, making them to him / Obedient and submissive the yoke in; / And trustful of his care and of his hand, / Grateless, uplifted their lives to demand, / When he, O horrid! taketh up the knife, / And therewith strikes the blow that ends their life!
1861, Alexander Smith, “Progress—Teaching”, in Agriculture: A Poem in Sixteen Books, Edinburgh: Thomas C. Jack, […], page 47:Brute spread his hands helplessly: “To think soch a fine woman should have soch a grateless child!”
1942 March 27, Rupert Hughes, “His Fabulous Fortune”, in Chicago Daily Tribune, volume CI, number 74, Chicago, Ill., page 35, column 8:Nor Guasco, nor Rudolfo left behinde, / Nor th'one nor th'other Guido, famous both, / Nor Eurard, nor Gernier must slip my mind, / To passe in gratelesse silence more then loth, / Whither do you louers and spouses kind?
[1594], Torquato Tasso, translated by R[ichard] C[arew], Godfrey of Bulloigne, or The Recouerie of Hierusalem. […], London: […] Iohn Windet for Thomas Man […]; republished in Early English Books Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: Text Creation Partnership, p. 2011, page 30:[…] will you flee for the end of the aimless peasant or will you strike him down with an arrow kick if you delight for the peasant is grateless and I am grateful dead ha ha […]
2016, Brandon West, Frankenstien: Playing the Guitar in the Plant, [Bloomington, Ind.]: Xlibris, →ISBN:Knowe Lupus this, lest she thee call churle gratelesse, and vnkinde.
1577, Timothe Kendall, Flovvers of Epigrammes, out of Sundrie the Moste Singular Authours Selected, as Well Auncient as Late Writers. […], London: […] [John Kingston] […] Ihon Shepperd; republished in Early English Books Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: Text Creation Partnership, p. 2011, page 14: