Word.ws English Dictionary

ill-willing

ill-willing adjective: having or displaying malevolence or ill-will.

Adjective

ill-willing (comparative more ill-willing, superlative most ill-willing)

  1. Having or displaying malevolence or ill-will.
    • 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...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

Examples of ill-willing in a sentence

  • 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:
  • 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:

Forms of ill-willing

comparativemore ill-willing
superlativemost ill-willing
alternative formill willing

Origin of ill-willing

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

Questions about ill-willing

What does ill-willing mean?
Ill-willing means having or displaying malevolence or ill-will.
How do you use ill-willing in a sentence?
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, […]
What part of speech is ill-willing?
Ill-willing is an adjective.

Words near ill-willing in the dictionary

  1. ill-using
  2. ill-will
  3. ill-willed
  4. ill-willer
  5. ill-willers
  6. ill-willing
  7. ill-wish
  8. ill-wished
  9. ill-wisher
  10. ill-wishers
  11. ill-wishes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ill-willing (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: “ill-willing.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ill-willing. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.