a. [f. THANK sb. + -LESS.)

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  1.  Not moved by or expressing gratitude; unthankful, ungrateful. Also fig. of things: Making no return, unresponsive.

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1536.  Lyndesay, Answ. Kingis Flyting, 33. Full sair I rew That euer I did Mouth thankles so persew.

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c. 1560.  A. Scott, Poems (S.T.S.), v. 63.

          Heirfoir, ȝe wantoun men in ȝowth,
Ffor helth of body now haif e
  Not oft till mell wt thankless mowth.

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1598.  Marston, Sco. Villanie, III. ix. All as thanklesse as ungratefull Thames He slinks away, leauing but reeking steames Of dungy slime behinde.

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1637.  Milton, Lycidas, 66. And strictly meditate the thankles Muse.

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1792.  Cowper, Stanzas Bill Mortality, 1. Thankless for favours from on high.

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1865.  Dickens, Mut. Fr., I. i. How can you be so thankless to your best friend?

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  2.  Of a task, or the like: Which brings no thanks; receiving or deserving no thanks.

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a. 1547.  Surrey, Æneid, II. 125. But whereunto these thanklesse tales in vaine Do I reherse?

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1591.  Savile, Tacitus’ Hist., II. lix. 88. A thancklesse office and displeasing.

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1690.  Norris, Beatitudes (1694), I. 178. Not only a thankless, but an odious, difficult and hazardous Undertaking.

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1834.  A. Combe, Prin. Physiol., x. 250–1. The weariness and ennui which the thankless effort must always induce.

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1868.  Miss Braddon, Dead-Sea Fr., i. It is but a thankless task to catalogue such a face.

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  3.  Without thanks: unthanked. rare.

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1638.  Sir T. Herbert, Trav. (ed. 2), 168. The Ambassador had no patience to digest it, save by equall contempt to send him thanklesse back again.

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1897.  Westm. Gaz., 22 Feb., 2/1. Prince Max comes to the Court of Ferdinand to return, thankless, a picture painted by Ferdinand.

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