thankless
Americanadjective
-
not likely to be appreciated or rewarded; unappreciated.
a thankless job.
- Synonyms:
- profitless, unrewarding, vain, unacknowledged
-
not feeling or expressing gratitude or appreciation; ungrateful.
a thankless child.
adjective
-
receiving no thanks or appreciation
a thankless job
-
ungrateful
a thankless pupil
Other Word Forms
- thanklessly adverb
- thanklessness noun
Etymology
Origin of thankless
Explanation
When you do something that doesn't earn you any gratitude, you can call it thankless. Handing out parking tickets and giving unsolicited advice can both be thankless jobs. If no one says, "Thanks!" despite your hard work, your task was a thankless one. You can also describe the person who doesn't express gratitude that way—Shakespeare's King Lear famously did this by saying, "How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child!"
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.
These are time-consuming and often thankless jobs for a friend.
From MarketWatch • Feb. 12, 2026
Neither of ABT’s two hardworking casts, with leading couples framed by male and female ensembles, made their dramatically opaque and intermittently acrobatic work look more than thankless.
From The Wall Street Journal • Nov. 3, 2025
"The award isn't about certifying research but celebrating it - the fun side of science. Most research is a thankless job done out of passion, and this is also a way of popularising it."
From BBC • Sep. 27, 2025
“I’m surprised by that amount of money, and it just goes to show that even though teaching is a thankless job, the students are craving and grateful for a role model.”
From Los Angeles Times • Jul. 23, 2025
Yes, the presidency was a thankless job, “a most unpleasant seat, full of thorns, briars, thistles, murmuring, fault-finding, calumny, obloquy.”
From "Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation" by Joseph J. Ellis
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.
