Ungentle

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Harsh, rough, or lacking in kindness and tenderness
2. Characterized by a lack of gentleness, this term describes behavior or demeanor that is harsh, severe, or unkind in nature
3. Showing roughness or severity rather than softness or kindness

Etymology: The adjective "ungentle" is about as plain as English word-building gets: the prefix "un-", meaning "not", attached to "gentle". The prefix has deep roots, traceable back through Old English and Proto-Germanic to a very ancient negating particle shared across the Indo-European languages, but the word itself is simply a negated form of "gentle" with no change in its core sense. What makes it worth a closer look is how the pairing works. "Gentle" once carried the sense of belonging to a family of good birth, and "ungentle" in its older uses could reach toward that social sense as well as toward plain harshness. Modern readers mostly hear only the moral meaning, that of behavior that is severe, rough, or unkind, but the two-part structure remains transparent. The un- prefix does nothing more than reverse whatever quality the base word names.

Synonyms: rough, harsh, uncivil

Antonyms: gentle, kind