unchilding
unchilding is the present participle and gerund of unchild.
Meaning of unchild
Verb
unchild (third-person singular simple present unchilds, present participle unchilding, simple past and past participle unchilded)
- To make (someone) childless.
- Though in this city he / Hath widow'd and unchilded many a one, / Which to this hour bewail the injury, / Yet he shall have a noble memory.c. 1608–1609 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Coriolanus”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
Adjective
unchilding (not comparable)
- Life-threatening, life-taking.
- Wiry and white-fiery and whirlwind-swivellèd snow / Spins to the widow-making unchilding unfathering deeps.1875–1876, Gerard Manley Hopkins, “The Wreck of the Deutschland”, in Robert Bridges, editor, Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins: Now First Published […], London: Humphrey Milford, published 1918, →OCLC...
- […] given him my whole attention and taken him away from the ruthless unchilding sea?1978, Iris Murdoch, The Sea, The Sea
Questions about unchilding
- What does unchilding mean?
- Unchilding means life-threatening, life-taking.
- What is unchilding the present participle and gerund of?
- Unchilding is the present participle and gerund of unchild.
- What part of speech is unchilding?
- Unchilding is an adjective.
Words near unchilding in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: unchilding (page history and authors); unchild (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: “unchilding.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/unchilding. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.