disgruntled
/dɪsˈɡrʌnt(ə)ld
/- It seems that some disgruntled moviegoers are angry with the advertisements that now run before most movies.
- By the end of his life he was a disgruntled and unhappy man, spending any money he had made on drink.
- A good reputation can be severely dented by a dissatisfied cleaner or by a disgruntled customer.
Synonyms
Derivatives
disgruntlement
/ noun ...- Their disgruntlement and anger quickly and spontaneously generated lively discussions and organisation for women's right to be treated as intelligent equals to men, not sex objects and domestic slaves.
- Most noticeably, the strikers gained negligible support and caused major public irritation, but this became quickly absorbed into the general disgruntlement with the state of the railways.
- ‘One of the disgruntlements of the backbenchers is that they felt they hadn't any input into the new legislative programme,’ she says.
Origin
Mid 17th century: from dis- (as an intensifier) + dialect gruntle 'utter little grunts', from grunt.
Disgruntled people may go round muttering to themselves and complaining. Originally the word involved comparison with a pig making small or subdued grunts (an Old English word probably imitating the sound). The main element of disgruntled is gruntle, a dialect word used of pigs from the Middle Ages and of grumbling people from a little later. In the 17th century someone added dis- as an intensifier and created disgruntled. In the 20th century the comic novelist P. G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) removed the dis- again and introduced the humorous gruntled, ‘pleased’. In The Code of the Woosters, published in 1938, he wrote: ‘I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.’