Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Inhospitable \In*hos"pi*ta*ble\, a. [Pref. in- not + hospitable: cf. L. inhospitalis.]
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Not hospitable; not disposed to show hospitality to strangers or guests; as, an inhospitable person or people.
Have you no touch of pity, that the poor Stand starved at your inhospitable door?
--Cowper. Affording no shelter or sustenance; barren; desert; bleak; cheerless; wild. ``Inhospitable wastes.''
--Blair. -- In*hos"pi*ta*ble*ness, n. -- In*hos"pi*ta*bly, adv.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1560s, from Middle French inhospitable (15c.), from Medieval Latin inhospitabilis (equivalent of Latin inhospitalis), from in- "not" (see in- (1)) + Medieval Latin hospitabilis (see hospitable).
Wiktionary
a. 1 (context of a person English) Not inclined to hospitality; unfriendly, 2 (context of a place English) Not offering shelter; barren or forbidding.
WordNet
adj. unfavorable to life or growth; "the barren inhospitable desert"; "inhospitable mountain areas" [ant: hospitable]
not hospitable; "they are extremely inhospitable these days"; "her greeting was cold and inhospitable" [ant: hospitable]
Wikipedia
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Usage examples of "inhospitable".
A crowd of temples and of votive altars, profusely scattered along its steep and woody banks, attested the unskilfulness, the terrors, and the devotion of the Grecian navigators, who, after the example of the Argonauts, explored the dangers of the inhospitable Euxine.
Like anthrax, the bacterium Clostridium botulinum forms a hard shell, called a spore, to protect itself when the environment turns inhospitable.
Unbathed, unshaven, heartily in need of mulled wine to cut the inhospitable northcoast chill, Lord Diegan drummed his gloved fingers on the hilts of his weapons and allowed that he had not.
Beyond the utmost limits of the Moors, the vast and inhospitable desert of the South extends above a thousand miles to the banks of the Niger.
If the Fuegians are Antarctic Esquimaux, the Patagonians are Antarctic Tartars, leading a wandering life under tents made of skins of horses and guanacos, and hating all settled habits, but not so utterly inhospitable and impracticable as their neighbours beyond the Strait.
It was no wonder Haen Marn had the reputation of being so inhospitable, Rhodry thought, if it took all of this to bring strangers in.
Whence come they, that they know not what and who My master is, approaching in ill hour The inhospitable roof of Polypheme, And the Cyclopian jaw-bone, man-destroying?
Areas that had thrived under the warmer postglacial regime suddenly became inhospitable, driving species to extinction and devastating the lives of the cave dwelling humans that depended on them.
He crested the hill and looked down on the wet rooftops of the town, the ashen carparks, the hideous plasticky shopping centre and the inhospitable moorland that butted against the new estate beyond.
We carried tents and groundsheets and sleeping-bags and saucepans and food and axes and everything else one needs in the interior of an unmapped, uninhabitable and inhospitable country.
Don Reeves gazed out the small Plexiglas window as the vast, inhospitable landscape of Queens grew closer, and uglier.
Under the rising moon it was an inhospitable and airy place that seemed to speak of sylphs and elementals, a place where lichen struggled to grab a gray foothold.
Nearly a month of unrelieved campaigning up through the inhospitable mountains had given them the look of ruffiansmostly unwashed, untrimmed and unshaven, showy with gaudy bits of looted Ahrmehnee finery, acrawl with vermin.
The closest piece of land was a tiny heap of treeless rock, one in the string of the inhospitable Aleutian Islands.
Lightly armed, richly dressed, and gay as a bridegroom on the eve of his nuptials, Richard caracoled along by the side of Queen Berengaria's litter, pointing out to her the various scenes through which they passed, and cheering with tale and song the bosom of the inhospitable wilderness.