English

edit

Etymology

edit

From un- +‎ giving.

Adjective

edit

ungiving (comparative more ungiving, superlative most ungiving)

  1. Not giving; ungenerous.
    • 2001, Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections:
      And yet it was clear, even as he was nearly drowning there in the North Atlantic, that in the other place there would be no objects whatsoever: that this miserable orange flotation device through which he’d stuck his arm, this fundamentally inscrutable and ungiving fabric-clad hunk of foam, would be a GOD in the objectless world of death toward which he was headed, would be the SUPREME I-AM-WHAT-I-AM in that universe of unbeing.