Unseemliness

[f. next, or UN-¹ 12.]

  1.  The quality of being unseemly in respect of action, conduct, etc.

c. 1380.  Wyclif, Sel. Wks., III. 43. Unsemelynes schulde not be in Cristes Chirche.

1549.  Udall, etc., Erasm. Par. 2 Thess. iii. 11 b. Getting their liuyng with their owne handes, rather than to be greuouse vnto other with shamles crauinges & vnsemelines.

1577.  trans. Bullinger’s Decades, 510/2. What vnseemelinesse soeuer is committed against God and his Church.

1678.  Wanley, Wond. Lit. World, V. i. § 82. 466/2. The Emperour did expostulate the unseemliness of the deed with him.

1829.  Lytton, Devereux, I. xiii. I saw the unseemliness of fighting with my preceptor, and a priest.

1871.  Jowett, Plato, IV. 170. His virtue being such, that he never … fell into any great unseemliness.

  2.  The quality of being unseemly in appearance; uncomeliness.

1597.  A. M., trans. Guillemeau’s Fr. Chirurg., 23/1. The cleavinge in the lippes is such an vnseemlines and deformitye.

1603.  G. Owen, Pembrokeshire (1892), 44. Parchinge of the sunne, and starveinge with cold is a cheefe cause of the vnseemelynes of the comon people of the countrey.

1846.  Landor, Imag. Conv., Wks. I. 195. Johnson. It makes an unseemly appearance in the type. Tooke. The unseemliness is not equal to the absurdity.