Word.ws English Dictionary

unthriftness

unthriftness noun: the process of wasting away; failure to thrive.

Noun

unthriftness (uncountable)

  1. The process of wasting away; failure to thrive.
    • The disease is quite generally distributed and may cause considerable loss and unthriftness among pigs when conditions are favorable for its development.1957, Arthur Laurence Anderson, Raymond William Gregory, Swine Management: Including Feeding and Breeding, page 499
    • Health disorders that are treated with adequate selenium include white muscle muscle disease, retained placenta in cattle, reproductive failure, unthriftness and dead or weak offspring.1981, Spooner Sheep Day
  2. (India, obsolete) Unthriftiness.
    • And of my self, I may be a near example unto you of my folly and unthriftiness.1537, Sir Thomas Wyatt, quoted in Senses of Style: Poetry before Interpretation, by Jeff Dolven, page 106
    • Thus you see that impatience causeth idolatry, causeth murder, brought in rebellion and unthriftness, expelled from heaven, and banished out of paradise; which things are registered for our erudition, to teach us sufference, and to beware of anger, of fierceness, of envy, which be the works of the...1842, John Bruce, The Works of Roger Hatchinson, page 338

Examples of unthriftness in a sentence

  • The symptoms include wasting as major sign but also unthriftness, paleness of the skin, respiratory distress, diarrhoea and sometimes icterus.2002, J[oaquim] Segalés, M[ariano] Domingo, “Postweaning multisystemic wasting syndrome (PMWS) in pigs. A review”, in Veterinary Quarterly...
  • In sub acute and chronic cases, lower doses of aflatoxin produce chronic effects such as lethargy, unthriftness, lameness, hepatitis and delayed death.2022, Jowel Debnath, Duck Production and Management:
  • It ignores the dangers of unthriftness and extravagance, incidental to too facile credit.1984, T. Paranjothi, Committees and Commissions on Co-operation, page 21:

Origin of unthriftness

From unthrift + -ness.

Questions about unthriftness

What does unthriftness mean?
Unthriftness means the process of wasting away; failure to thrive.
How do you use unthriftness in a sentence?
The symptoms include wasting as major sign but also unthriftness, paleness of the skin, respiratory distress, diarrhoea and sometimes icterus.
What part of speech is unthriftness?
Unthriftness is a noun.

Words near unthriftness in the dictionary

  1. unthrift
  2. unthriftier
  3. unthriftiest
  4. unthriftily
  5. unthriftiness
  6. unthriftness
  7. unthrifts
  8. unthrifty
  9. unthrillable
  10. unthrilled
  11. unthrilling

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: unthriftness (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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