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UNSETTLE
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (verb)
Verb forms
Present simple: I / you / we / they unsettle ... he / she / it unsettles
Past simple: unsettled
Past participle: unsettled
-ing form: unsettling
Sense 1
Meaning:
Disturb the composure of
Synonyms:
enervate; faze; unnerve; unsettle
Classified under:
Hypernyms (to "unsettle" is one way to...):
discomfit; discompose; disconcert; untune; upset (cause to lose one's composure)
Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "unsettle"):
unman (cause to lose one's nerve)
Sentence frames:
Something ----s somebody
Something ----s something
Sentence example:
The bad news will unsettle him
Context examples:
No. If I get a little thin, it is with anxiety about my prospects, yet unsettled—my departure, continually procrastinated.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
The ground covered with snow, and the atmosphere in that unsettled state between frost and thaw, which is of all others the most unfriendly for exercise, every morning beginning in rain or snow, and every evening setting in to freeze, she was for many days a most honourable prisoner.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
Catherine's feelings, as she got into the carriage, were in a very unsettled state; divided between regret for the loss of one great pleasure, and the hope of soon enjoying another, almost its equal in degree, however unlike in kind.
(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)
Her smile however changed to a sigh when she remembered that promise to Willoughby was yet unfulfilled, and feared she had that to communicate which might again unsettle the mind of Marianne, and ruin at least for a time this fair prospect of busy tranquillity.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
She had been unwilling to mention Bingley; and the unsettled state of her own feelings had made her equally avoid the name of his friend.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
The fact is, we avoid mentioning the subject; and my unsettled prospects and indifferent circumstances are a great consolation to them.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
Now, Mr. Bhaer was a diffident man and slow to offer his own opinions, not because they were unsettled, but too sincere and earnest to be lightly spoken.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
His unsettled affections, wavering with his vanity, Maria's decided attachment, and no sufficient principle on either side, gave it possibility: Miss Crawford's letter stampt it a fact.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
He is not very forgiving: he broke with his family, and now for many years he has led an unsettled kind of life.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
The vague and unsettled suspicions which uncertainty had produced of what Mr. Darcy might have been doing to forward her sister's match, which she had feared to encourage as an exertion of goodness too great to be probable, and at the same time dreaded to be just, from the pain of obligation, were proved beyond their greatest extent to be true!
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
