Dictionary

ill-willing en · ADJ

Etymology

From Middle English *il-willynge, ill willand, il-willande, equivalent to ill + willing.

Meanings

1. Having or displaying malevolence or ill-will.
   • Should a person be suffering from the ill-willing attention of one of the fairy people a Fairy Doctor must be found. 2016, Morgan Daimler, Fairycraft: Following The Path Of Fairy Witchcraft:
   • As has been illustrated by numerous scientific articles over the last 30 years, there is almost always a possibility for an ill-willing intruder to re-identify (part of) anonymised microdata, […] 2001, Statistical Journal of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe:
   • But then neither, obviously, is the simple antithesis of an ill-willing delinquency sufficient, for the machinery that thrives on the good will of individuals easily privatises that into a set of individual aberrations—[…] 1981, Peter Botsman, Chris Burns, Peter J. Hutchings, The Foreign Bodies Papers, page 81:
   • I don't know how— but it will make me uneasy, if I am to make up my accounts to you: for so well known is your love to us, that though you would no more do in unjust thing, than, by God's grace, we should desire you; yet this same ill-willing world might think it was like making up accounts to one's self. 1810, The authoress, by the author of 'Rachel', page 17:
   • Some quaint device or rare conceit of her nigh frozen Robin Redbreast; praying to be once more cherished from the cold blasts of an ill-willing world, in the warm bosom of Royal favour. 1857, Thomas of Swarraton, The Noble Traytour, page 332:

Forms