grateless

English

Etymology

From grate +‎ -less. Sense 2 on the analogy of grateful.

Adjective

grateless (not comparable)

1. Without a grate.
2. (nonstandard) Ungrateful, thankless.
   • 1577, Timothe Kendall, Flovvers of Epigrammes, out of Sundrie the Moste Singular Authours Selected, as Well Auncient as Late Writers. […], London: […] [John Kingston] […] Ihon Shepperd; republished in Early English Books Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: Text Creation Partnership, p. 2011, page 14:

     Knowe Lupus this, lest she thee call churle gratelesse, and vnkinde.

   • [1594], Torquato Tasso, translated by R[ichard] C[arew], Godfrey of Bulloigne, or The Recouerie of Hierusalem. […], London: […] Iohn Windet for Thomas Man […]; republished in Early English Books Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: Text Creation Partnership, p. 2011, page 30:

     Nor Guasco, nor Rudolfo left behinde, / Nor th'one nor th'other Guido, famous both, / Nor Eurard, nor Gernier must slip my mind, / To passe in gratelesse silence more then loth, / Whither do you louers and spouses kind?

   • 1845 August, Thomas Eyre Poole, “The First Murderer. (A Fragment).”, in The Church of England Magazine, volume XX, number 568, London: Edwards and Hughes, […], published 1846 February 14, page 104, column 2:

     Corruption’s loathsome touch hath not yet marr’d / The beauty of Eve’s youngest, fresh as when / Beside yon priestless altar late he stood, / And, in the pious fervour of his soul), / Warm with the hope of an exalted faith, / And breathing forth the prayerful homage, paid / The votive off’ring grateful to his God. Sad lesson of mortality, and taught / At sadder cost—the fearful risk of heav’n. Ah, grateless unbeliever!

   • 1861, Alexander Smith, “Progress—Teaching”, in Agriculture: A Poem in Sixteen Books, Edinburgh: Thomas C. Jack, […], page 47:

     Thence passing through the land of the Sabines, / Divided by the lofty Appenines, / Rising, she found the world-renownèd Rome, / And grateful welcom’d, made it long a home, / Where, honour’d she, respected, all were bound / To cultivate some portion of the ground, / In recognition of her most just claims, / The least of which is, ’tis her power that tames / Horse, ox, and heifer, for man’s uses, though / Not for those uses which their blood lets flow / In crimson streams, with which life ebbs away— / A cruel practice is this art to slay! / But for those uses, perhaps not enjoined, / For benefit implied of all mankind, / From their mark’d instincts, making them to him / Obedient and submissive the yoke in; / And trustful of his care and of his hand, / Grateless, uplifted their lives to demand, / When he, O horrid! taketh up the knife, / And therewith strikes the blow that ends their life!

   • 1894, Edwin Lester Arnold, chapter I, in The Constable of St. Nicholas, London: Chatto & Windus, […], page 37:

     “I am duly grateful to those necessities which inclined your valour to such leniency. I think,” he added with a sneer, “it is not the first time the poor Jew’s usefulness will have saved the poor Jew’s neck!” / Oswald walked away to the balcony, and stood reflecting for a moment. Then he came back. “Isaac,” he said, “it serves no purpose for us to quarrel. I have gone so far with you I must needs go still a little farther. You, who know so much, must needs know a little more; therefore, listen to me now, and, when I have done, then if by your cunning—whether it comes from heaven or hell I will not ask—if you can get me from the shadow of this oncoming cloud that blights my outlook and chills my courage; if you can twist these adverse circumstances that beset me into the shape I would, you will save more than you yet think of, nor find me grateless.”

   • 1942 March 27, Rupert Hughes, “His Fabulous Fortune”, in Chicago Daily Tribune, volume CI, number 74, Chicago, Ill., page 35, column 8:

     Brute spread his hands helplessly: “To think soch a fine woman should have soch a grateless child!”

   • 1958, Bernardo de Balbuena, translated by Samuel Beckett, “Immortal Springtime and Its Tokens”, in Octavio Paz, compiler, Anthology of Mexican Poetry, Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, →LCCN, page 51:

     Here May and April flourish all year long in temperate pleasantness and grateful cool, their zephyrs soft, their skies serene and bright. Between the mount of Ossa and a spur of towering Olympus there is spread a valley full of freshness and of flowers, whose beauty Peneus, with his grateless child, increasingly enriches and augments with leaves of laurel and with silver streams.

   • 2016, Brandon West, Frankenstien: Playing the Guitar in the Plant, [Bloomington, Ind.]: Xlibris, →ISBN:

     […] will you flee for the end of the aimless peasant or will you strike him down with an arrow kick if you delight for the peasant is grateless and I am grateful dead ha ha […]