Definify.com

Webster 1913 Edition

Funest

Fu-nest′

,

Adj.

[L.

funestus

, fr.

funus

a funeral, destruction: cf. F.

funeste

.]

Lamentable; doleful.

[R.]

“Funest and direful deaths.”

Coleridge.

A forerunner of something very

funest

.

Evelyn.

Definition 2024

funest

funest

English

Adjective

funest ‎(comparative more funest, superlative most funest)

(now rare) Causing death or disaster; fatal, catastrophic; deplorable, lamentable.
- 1663 Sept 17th, John Evelyn in a letter to Dr. Pierce, published 1863 in Diary and correspondence of John Evelyn, F.R.S., volume 3, page 142:
  I do assure you, there is nothing I have a greater scorn and indignation against, than these wretched scoffers; and I look upon our neglect of severely punishing them as an high defect in our politics, and a forerunner of something very funest.
- 1716 Nov 7th, quoted from 1742, probably Alexander Pope, God's Revenge Against Punning, from Miscellanies, 3rd volume, page 226:
  Scarce had this unhappy Nation recover'd these funest disasters, when the abomination of Play-houses rose up in this land: From hence hath an inundation of Obscenity flow'd from the Court and overspread the Kingdom.
- 1854, Samuel Taylor Coleridge:
  …excepting only some Popes have be'en remarked by their own histories for funest and direful deaths.
- 1922 (first published 1923-09-07), Wallace Stevens, Of the Manner of Addressing Clouds, from collection Harmonium:
  Funest philosophers and ponderers,
  Their evocations are the speech of clouds.
- 1969, Vladimir Nabokov, Ada or Ardor, Penguin 2011, p. 264:
  Flora, initially an ivory-pale, dark-haired funest beauty, whom the author transformed just in time into a third bromidic dummy with a dun bun.

Catalan

Adjective

funest m ‎(feminine funesta, masculine plural funests or funestos, feminine plural funestes)

funest