mistrustful
Americanadjective
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of mistrustful
Explanation
When you're mistrustful, you have a sneaking suspicion that you should be wary of someone or something. If you're mistrustful of clowns, you keep your distance from them at birthday parties and circuses. If someone is mistrustful, they have a general lack of trust, or a suspicion. You might be mistrustful of things you read online, or mistrustful of teachers who assure you an assignment will be fun, or mistrustful of unfamiliar new foods. This adjective is very closely related to distrustful, although being distrustful is typically based on experience, while being mistrustful is more likely caused by a general sense that something's not trustworthy.
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.
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.
From Salon • Sep. 11, 2025
When he sought to set up his company’s flagship inn in the predominantly Arab northern Israeli town of Nazareth in 2005, the structure’s Palestinian owners were at first deeply mistrustful.
From Los Angeles Times • Nov. 6, 2023
Even foreign governments mistrustful of Haftar have put aside political misgivings or fears over Libya's rampant corruption, to directly engage in a region he controls.
From Reuters • Sep. 14, 2023
Sentencing Hinchcliffe, of Songthrush Way, Wath upon Dearne, Judge Robin Mairs told him his conduct "betrays your fellow officers who do a decent, committed job and makes women mistrustful of the police force".
From BBC • Mar. 31, 2023
“Thank you: that contents me for to-night. Now you had better go; for if you stay longer, you will perhaps irritate me afresh by some mistrustful scruple.”
From "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë
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.
