- present participle of dishearten.
disheartening
Americanadjective
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of disheartening
Explanation
Something disheartening causes you to lose your confidence or enthusiasm. It's disheartening when your basketball team loses four games in a row. Breaking disheartening down to its parts, you can see the dis- prefix, meaning "not" or "take away," and the figurative heart, "good feelings or courage." While a heartening message from your pen pal cheers you up, anything disheartening does the opposite. A disheartening grade on your big English paper brings you down, and disheartening news can make your whole family feel a little depressed. If it's disheartening, it's a bummer.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
What’s disheartening is that she pretends there is no connection, telling Vogue Italia last week, “Algorithms and artificial intelligence are the opposite of taking risks to me, and that is the opposite of making art.”
From Salon ● Jul. 8, 2026
We’ll see several startling upsets in this round that won’t end up mattering, along with a disheartening number of 0-0 and 1-1 draws.
From Salon ● Jun. 11, 2026
Shelly Corbin, a Native American activist who participated in the “Reimagining” meetings, found the federal suit disheartening.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 4, 2026
He described it as "disheartening" seeing people ruin land in the Gower area which he said was a beautiful place.
From BBC ● May 21, 2026
It was both disheartening and worrisome to know we were out here alone with no hope of coming across someone to help us.
From "Summer of the Mariposas" by Guadalupe García McCall
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
