mistrustful

[mis-truhst-fuhl]

adjective

1. full of mistrust; suspicious.

Other Word Forms

• mistrustfully adverb
• mistrustfulness noun
• unmistrustful adjective
• unmistrustfully adverb

Word History and Origins

Origin of mistrustful¹

First recorded in 1520–30; mistrust + -ful

Example Sentences

In no small part, Kirk helped fashion the world in which we now find ourselves: Divided, angry, mistrustful of our neighbors and their motives, and at the very least, increasingly violent in rhetoric.

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“There’s a Calvinist streak in the American spirit and nature that is so deeply mistrustful of pleasure. And right now, it’s coterminous with fascism, where there shouldn’t be any pleasure for its own sake.”

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In 1976, as he accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination for the presidency, America was coming out of a contentious and mistrustful era of Watergate and the Vietnam War.

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Moreover, Niger's regime, whose attitude towards the EU as a whole has become almost as mistrustful as its broken relationship with France, continues to seek alternatives to its old Western partnerships.

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Observers say that continued outreach has allowed the department to make significant strides in some communities that were long mistrustful of law enforcement.

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Related Words

• leery 
• skeptical 
• suspicious 
• wary