Word.ws English Dictionary

discountenanced

discountenanced is the simple past and past participle of discountenance.

Adjective

discountenanced (comparative more discountenanced, superlative most discountenanced)

  1. deprecated
  2. disliked

Meaning of discountenance

Verb

discountenance (third-person singular simple present discountenances, present participle discountenancing, simple past and past participle discountenanced)

  1. (transitive) To have an unfavorable opinion of; to deprecate or disapprove of.
    • A town meeting was convened to discountenance riot.1855, George Bancroft, chapter XXX, in History of the United States, from the Discovery of the American Continent, volume V, London: Routledge, page 74
  2. (transitive) To abash, embarrass or disconcert.
    • How would one look from his Majeſtick brow, / Seated as on the top of Vertues hill, / Diſcount'nance her deſpiſ'd, and put to rout / All her array, her female pride deject, / Or turn to reverent awe? […]1671, John Milton, “The Second Book”, in Paradise Regain’d. A Poem. In IV Books. To which is Added, Samson Agonistes, London: […] J[ohn] M[acock] for John Starkey […], →OCLC, page 39, lines 216–220
  3. (transitive) To refuse countenance or support to; to discourage.
    • These were rejected by Parliament, which discountenanced the amalgamation of competing lines but gave broad approval in theory to end-on amalgamations.1948 January and February, “British Railways”, in Railway Magazine, page 1

See all 4 meanings of discountenance

Forms of discountenanced

comparativemore discountenanced
superlativemost discountenanced

Questions about discountenanced

What does discountenanced mean?
Discountenanced means deprecated.
What is discountenanced the simple past and past participle of?
Discountenanced is the simple past and past participle of discountenance.
What part of speech is discountenanced?
Discountenanced is an adjective.

Words near discountenanced in the dictionary

  1. discountability
  2. discountable
  3. discountably
  4. discounted
  5. discountenance
  6. discountenanced
  7. discountenancer
  8. discountenancers
  9. discountenances
  10. discountenanceth
  11. discountenancing

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: discountenanced (page history and authors); discountenance (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “discountenanced.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/discountenanced. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.