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
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.
Miyamoto has a similar humble but thankless task she’d want help with.
From Salon ● Jul. 18, 2026
As a society, Kalki says, we take mothers for granted and raising children is a thankless job.
From BBC ● Jul. 9, 2026
And somehow she had to crack China’s near-total dominance of the world’s rare earths—a strategically important but commercially thankless task.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 18, 2026
These are time-consuming and often thankless jobs for a friend.
From MarketWatch ● Feb. 12, 2026
Instead, Nana had endured the shame of bearing a harami, had shaped her life around the thankless task of raising Mariam and, in her own way, of loving her.
From "A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseini
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.
