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What is "unenviable"

Crossword clues for unenviable

unenviable
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
unenviable
adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
an unenviable task (=unpleasant or difficult)
▪ He has the unenviable task of telling hungry people that there is no food.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
job
▪ Mr Sylvester went with her, glad to escape the inevitable recriminations, to leave Nutty to her unenviable job as captain.
▪ The unenviable job of heading such a body falls to the Archbishop of Canterbury.
▪ With Walsh under suspension, the unenviable job of marking Bull has been handed to Simon Grayson.
▪ It's a cliché to say that the judge had a difficult task but indeed he did have an unenviable job.
position
▪ Sculptors of monuments which are commissioned to speak for others, then, are placed in an unenviable position.
task
▪ The Prague impresario Guardasoni was given the unenviable task of getting one together.
▪ And we have a new secretary, Kirsty Rawlings, who has the unenviable task of organising me!
▪ The doctor and Chief Superintendent Coffin stood aside as the photographer moved in to start his unenviable task of recording the remains.
▪ Richard of Gloucester has a difficult task - an unenviable task, some might say.
▪ This man has the unenviable task of telling hungry women and children queueing for food that they're waiting in vain.
▪ The residential staff are presented with an unenviable task.
▪ They already have the unenviable task of supervising some of the most dangerous prisoners in the country.
▪ Her successor faces an unenviable task.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Lee had the unenviable task of reorganizing the department.
▪ The President is in an unenviable position.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ A third of the way up a vicious-looking ice-climb were two men, slowly hacking an unenviable route with axes and crampons.
▪ And we have a new secretary, Kirsty Rawlings, who has the unenviable task of organising me!
▪ Brown and Warne had an unenviable dilemma on their hands, even if they brought it on themselves.
▪ But Washington emerged from most of those exchanges with an unenviable plight.
▪ Instead, he chose to stick with the old ways and practise an unenviable form of reverse racism.
▪ Policing this activity to ensure submission of the reports is an unenviable and thankless task.
▪ The plight of the injured was an unenviable one; several of them could not be moved.
▪ The Prague impresario Guardasoni was given the unenviable task of getting one together.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
unenviable

1640s, from un- (1) "not" + enviable (adj.). Related: Unenviably.

Wiktionary
unenviable

a. difficult, undesirable, or unpleasant; not to be envy.

WordNet
unenviable

  1. adj. hard to deal with; especially causing pain or embarrassment; "awkward (or embarrassing or difficult) moments in the discussion"; "an awkward pause followed his remark"; "a sticky question"; "in the unenviable position of resorting to an act he had planned to save for the climax of the campaign" [syn: awkward, embarrassing, sticky]

  2. so undesirable as to be incapable of arousing envy; "unenviable notoriety"

Usage examples of "unenviable".

The Rebels were still loosely trapped -- in a manner of speaking-but the punks were now in that unenviable position of riding a tiger: afraid to turn loose and afraid to stay on.

On that same evening Jean was to meet his accomplices at a ball at the Rainbow--a public-house bearing a very unenviable reputation--and give them their last instructions.

I feel like those unfortunate automobilists who achieve an unenviable motoriety by coming to a hopeless stop with their cars in the most crowded thoroughfares.

Having been a lifelong friend of the defendant's, his position was an unenviable and difficult one, and no word of criticism was directed against his assignment of the case to Chief Assistant District Attorney Sullivan.

The Daimler limousine crawled through the congested street in Mongkok, an urban mass that had the unenviable distinction of being the most densely populated city district in the history of mankind.

The Guild Master was in the unenviable position of having to keep as much memory current as possible to manage the intricacies of his position.

With the exception of the Hotel Metropole--of whose night life the average Muscovite is totally unaware--undoubtedly the most alert building in that part of town and at that time of night, the most active, the most pulsatingly alive and the one where the most concentrated work was being done was the building on Dzerzhinsky Square that enjoys an unenviable notoriety under the name of "The Lubyanka", in which the Committee for State Security (otherwise known as the KGB) has centered its activities.

And if today I remind my colleagues and the honorable Board of this platitude, and call upon them to turn their eyes for once to the dangers that threaten us, if I assume for a moment the unenviable and often ludicrous role of prophet, warner, and sermonizer, I do so fully prepared to accept mocking laughter.

The solar system guards had the unenviable task of rounding up such drifting threats of death and sending them into cleansing suns or giving them some other final end.